


Two Go Adventuring Again

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Series: Older Lads [5]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 19:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 55,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2868896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Christmas, and the lads are officially retiring...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Go Adventuring Again

**Chapter One**

It was the week before the week before Christmas, and trees were bare in London, but the decorations were up, and in just a few days time they would be leaving CI5 for good.

Doyle pushed back in his chair, stood up and stretched, then looked down again at the files and papers strewn across his desk, work still far from finished, loose ends still perilously dangling. At the rate he was going he’d be stuck here until New Year after all. Still, nothing he could do about it, short of abandoning everything and loosing chaos all across the country - maybe then they’d realise what they were throwing away. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, calmingly, running his fingers through his hair and pulling it a little, as if it might wake him up.

Just a few more days, and an entire life would be gone.

His computer flashed at him, and he absently reached out and clicked the mouse to open Salma’s message. She’d reminded him three times already about the Girton file, and he was still waiting to hear back from DDT, so _that_ wasn’t going to happen…

_Minister on his way with urgent matter, eta 30 mins._

Christ, what now? He was leaving, wasn’t he, doing what they wanted, going quietly, off into the wilderness… Not that Bodie and a pub in Dorset were wilderness exactly, and maybe he wouldn’t miss having to wear this bloody suit or deal with the Minister, or half the things his job had turned into, but - well, it wasn’t exactly the hub of things down there, was it? No rush, no bustle, no tearing after villains, gun drawn… And alright, he hadn’t done that for months… or over a year - or two - but he…

The door to his office swung abruptly open with a sweep of air, and he looked up, frown set firmly across his brow.

“Alright, mate?”

Bloody Bodie. No he _wasn’t_ alright.

“Fine,” he said, shortly, and sat down dismissively in his chair. He clicked on Salma’s message to acknowledge, and picked up a file at random from the scattering.

He could almost feel Bodie revving up to change gear and tactics, to humour him through yet another mood. All very well for him, he’d _chosen_ to go and bury himself in bloody Dorset, he’d _given_ them his fucking resignation… “I’m busy,” he added, in what was probably a vain attempt to forestall him, “If I don’t get through this lot by five there’ll be agents hung to dry from here to the Hebrides.”

“Bloody minister,” Bodie said, rather than anything soothing, so that Doyle looked up in surprise. “Picks his moments, doesn’t he?”

“He wants you as well?”

“Any reason why he shouldn’t?” Bodie raised an eyebrow, looked amused. “Has anyone ever told you, sunshine, that it’s not all about you?”

Doyle’s mouth quirked unwillingly. “You’ve been gossiping with Si again, haven’t you? You gonna tell me to talk to your hand an’ all?”

Bodie obediently raised his arm and flapped at him. “Girlfriend, that’s so last year,” he said, camp as he could be, and Doyle gave in, smothered his grin, and began an advance, backing Bodie towards the wall behind the door.

“Who’re you calling _girlfriend_..?”

He reached across to cuff an only slowly retreating Bodie and found his wrist caught and held instead, himself dragged to lean against a white-shirted chest, and a stomach that was slightly softer than it once had been and maybe just a bit more comforting. 

He gave it a prod for form’s sake. “You been on the pies ag- ” he started, was cut off by a knock this time, and a tactful cough that separated them firmly and quickly.

“Mr Bodie..?” 

“Salma?”

Salma stepped further into the room, long dark hair swinging behind her, threaded though it now was with grey, heels clacking efficiently across the floor. “A Mr Roland has been trying to get in touch with you, from the brewery. He said he’d tried your mobile several times, but…” she pulled the offending item from her pocket, and passed it firmly to him, “…you must have left it by accident in the _monsteria deliciosa_ in the canteen…”

It had never worked with Salma yet, but Doyle watched with undisguised amusement as Bodie tried his most innocent eyes and a quizzical pout on her. “Must have fallen out of my jacket,” he said, clutching it carefully and tucking his hands in his trouser pockets.

“…buried under two inches of decorative pebbles…”

“You know, I thought I saw a rat up there the other day…”

“…and provided with a small headstone that read simply ‘ _R.I.P - now maybe I can’_. In felt tip.”

“Ah…” Bodie ducked his head and looked up from under eyelashes that were paler than they’d once been, but just as long. “Sounds like someone’s having a bit of a laugh…”

“Yes it does, doesn’t it?” Salma raised her own eyebrows at him, passed Doyle a memory stick, and with a final backward look of resignation left them to it.

“Bo- _die_ …”

“I can’t think how it got there, honest I can’t…”

“You lousy… What’s the brewery want then?” he asked, knowing he’d been successfully distracted from his mood despite himself. _Bloody Bodie…_

“Dunno - not had me phone on me…”

“ _Bodie_!”

The intercom buzzed, so that all Doyle could do was throw his own knowing, disapproving, and reluctantly half-smiling glare in Bodie’s direction, before stepping back to his desk to reply.

“The Minister to see you, sir.” Salma said, at her most official.

“Thank you Salma, bring him through please…”

He glanced quellingly at Bodie, pulled his jacket from the back of the chair, and shrugged into it just before the door opened yet again.

“Doyle - glad I caught you in, apologies for the short notice… Bodie, how are you?” The Minister crossed to each of them in turn, hand held out for shaking, a warm smile on his face.

Doyle took a breath - the man was always, unfailingly polite, but today he was being nice to them - and ushered him to the table by the window, with its black leather chairs and third floor view across the rooftops of London. The snow had gone now, but it was winter-dusk dark already, and lights glittered and shone against the greyness of the day.

“Kids are looking forward to the next dump of snow,” the Minister said, following his gaze. “Can’t say I am - we end up working harder just to prove we don’t have to shut down like the rest of ’em…”

Bodie made sympathetic noises, and Doyle nodded. “You must be very busy,” he said, meaning _get to it_. 

“Aren’t we all, these days! You’re busy yourself, I see.” He gestured to the table, an overflow of files from Doyle’s desk, and Doyle gathered them up without comment - not all meant for official eyes, and certainly not this man’s - took them back to his desk and dropped them into a drawer.

“How can we help you?” Bodie asked, drawing the Minister’s attention away. Doyle sat down on the chair nearest Bodie, so that it almost felt as if they were interviewing the man, and leaned back casually, resting his elbow on the chair arm, his chin on his hand. The bloke was only his boss until Friday, after that he could go hang - they didn’t need to kow-tow to him ever again. 

“Well as a matter of fact you can,” the Minister said, to an offer Bodie hadn’t made, reaching inside his jacket and retrieving an ordinary brown envelope. “Operation Scarlet.” He held it out across the table, and after the briefest pause Bodie took it from him, slit the top, and took out the folded sheets of paper. After a moment’s reading he gave a low whistle, looked up at the Minister, and passed them to Doyle.

“This genuine?” he asked, and Doyle felt his own eyes widen in disbelief as he read.

“It appears to be,” the Minister said, and when Doyle looked up he found himself under scrutiny.

“The Young Guard? She hasn’t exactly been an example to the youth of today so far, has she?”

“That photo spread? No - but profitable, I imagine, and now’s the time she needs to cash in.”

“Yeah, but we all know there’s more to her than that,” Bodie said with a twist of his lips, and the Minister nodded.

“Of course there is. And a number of other communiques sent shortly after that one suggest she has ongoing contact with a number of people here that our intelligence hadn’t known about in the first place.”

“And how exactly do you think we can help in - ” Doyle looked pointedly at his watch, “-the next two days, two hours and three minutes? MI6 is flying solo these days, remember?”

“I don’t suppose you’d reconsider your resignation?” the Minister asked, turning, Doyle noted with a frown, to Bodie. 

“Not on my own, no.”

“You must see - ” the Minister began, but caught himself with a wry smile. “No, I know that you don’t.”

“Or maybe we do,” Doyle suggested, eyes narrowing, ignoring Bodie’s _cool it_ , Ray glance.

The Minister seemed to relax slightly in his seat. “You’re right, we would like to make further use of your expertise on this one - and perhaps retain you longer to complete some other assignments before transference,” he added, with another look across to Doyle’s desk. 

“Not going to happen,” Bodie said. “But I’m sure you can handle a nice young spy like Anna…”

“We would like to offer you - _both_ of you - a temporary contract to…”

“No thank you,” Bodie interrupted, and Doyle turned to look at him in surprise. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too - we’re either both in or we’re both out, and we’re not playing jack-in-the-box until you get bored. Bring Doyle back and forget the rubbish about closing CI5 down.”

The Minister shook his head, though the look he gave Doyle was sympathetic. “It’s not within my remit or my power, and it really isn’t something that can happen. We’ve _got_ to scale down, and we’ve got to be seen to be scaling down, affairs like CI5. It simply can’t go on.”

“And yet you admit that the work needs to continue, it needs to be done, and you wouldn’t be here if we weren’t the best men to do it.” Bodie had the bit between his teeth now, as if, Doyle thought, he’d been waiting all these months for just this moment. Maybe he had.

“Of course there will always be a need for the work, but we have to consider the good of the country. The economy…”

“You’re not doing this for the good of the economy!”

“Mr Bodie - this is not a debate that I am willing to have with you right now, but I am authorised to leave this in your hands and give you twenty four hours to make up your mind - I won’t take any decision as final until then.” He stood, waited until they too stood, reluctantly on Doyle’s part. “This is a chance for you to continue the excellent efforts you’ve made for your country, and I hope that your sense of duty…”

Doyle blocked him out as best he could, a politician’s spiel all the way to the door, and when they’d finally seen him out - wishing only that they could see him off the premises as well - he turned and leaned back against the door, letting his pent up frustration out with a thump to the wood behind him. “They _always_ try something like this,” he began, “They can’t leave it alone, they want their pound’s worth of...”

“Yeah, they always do,” Bodie interrupted smoothly, “I reckon we almost had him there though - he wants you back, Ray.”

Doyle shook his head, staring somewhere over Bodie’s shoulder towards the night lights that were London city. “Nah - he wants _you_ back, and he’ll take me for a while to get you if he has to...” 

And yet… _it had been Bodie doing all the arguing just now_ … 

“He’d be just as happy if I was rotting away in the backwoods somewhere, pottering around with my veggie patch and my bike, as long as you were here.” 

… _being blown about by the fresh air, no one his boss except Bodie_ …

“Bloody politicians don’t care...” 

… _He’d frozen right through, and let Bodie do all the shouting. Maybe_ …

“You know, he might be right.” He blinked, caught Bodie’s gaze and held it.

Bodie blinked back at him. “What d’you mean he…?”

Doyle shrugged, then held up both hands placatingly as Bodie drew breath again. “I know, I know… A week ago I’d probably have bitten his hand off - god, right up to a minute before he offered I would have, but… when it came down to it…” He shrugged again, without words.

“Didn’t want to give them the satisfaction?” Bodie suggested, “Let ‘em stew for a while?”

“Nah… I mean, you’re right - okay, we get them to cancel my retirement, but how long for?”

Bodie said nothing.

“Like you said, they’ll only turn around and do it again in a year’s time, and then we’ll be high and dry again. And…” 

Bodie raised an eyebrow.

“…well, we don’t want to let Burt down, do we? He won’t find another buyer as daft as us…”

“Doyle - are you trying to tell me you _want_ to retire to the seaside?” There was a disbelieving note in Bodie’s voice, but there was a smile starting on his lips, and his eyes were beginning to crinkle, the way they did, Doyle thought, with a rush to his heart, when he was well and truly happy. “All these months of moping around and getting in everyone’s face, and bloody blowing up at the slightest pretext, and…?”

“Alright, don’t go on about it… Everyone’s entitled to change their mind, you - ”

He found himself enveloped in a pair of arms still strong enough to lift him from the ground and hug the breath from him, dropped back to the floor, and then hands squeezing his face still as Bodie kissed him soundly. He staggered slightly as he was finally released, looked up bemusedly to see Bodie rubbing his hands together and grinning delightedly.

“Ah, it’s gonna be great Ray - you’ll see. You and me, nothing to do all day but whatever we want…”

“Run the pub,” Doyle interjected, before Bodie could get carried away, but it was already too late for that.

“Our own bosses…”

“Except for the brewery.”

“Sleep in every morning…”

“Till at least seven.”

“And all the beer we can drink - can’t be bad, can it?”

Doyle shook his head, but he found his was smiling again, that the drop he’d felt to his stomach when the Minister spoke, the hollow feeling he’d had in his gut since that day in the summer he’d been called into the Minister’s office and told his time was numbered, had been replaced with a kind of singing that swept up through his blood to his heart, as if he was five years old again and still believed that Christmas would bring all his dreams come true.

Maybe it was because, at the end of the day, it was Bodie he believed in - Bodie, who’d fought for him even at the bitter end, when the men he’d given his life for had turned around and stabbed him in the back despite it all. Old and retired he might be, but this was it - he was finally, at long last, going home to a Christmas that would live up to everything he’d ever hoped it might.

 

**Chapter Two**

By the time Doyle left the office it was not only well and truly night, it was almost the next day. Loose end after loose end were dispatched to this person or that, and one or two were tied up entirely, so that he laid the files in Salma’s in-tray with a smile of his own and a twinkle in his eye, and she smiled back at him, despite working late for the third time that week.

“Anyone’d think you had no home to go to,” he said, when he found her still there with him at ten thirty, computer humming softly, in-tray diminishing.

“They’ll see enough of me next year to make up for it,” she smiled. “And vice-versa - I’ll take this kind of peace and quiet whilst I can get it.”

Salma’s four children were probably the quietest kids Doyle had ever known, and two of them were doing their GCSEs, A-star pupils whose idea of a good night out was a visit to their nearest library.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay on?” he said suddenly. “There’s nothing that says you ‘ave to go just because we are.”

“It wouldn’t be the same - best to make a clean break and move on to the next thing, isn’t it?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, wondering how he could have forgotten yet again that she could do _innocent_ even better than Bodie could. 

“You always were too smart for this place,” he told her, then reached across and turned out the angle-poise light on her desk. “Let’s get some practice at packing it in, for tonight at least, eh?”

He made sure she put her coat on and set off down to the carpark, went back to turn off his own computer and gather together a few final papers to read somewhere between getting home and falling into what was left of their bed, and dragging himself out of it and starting all over again tomorrow. 

Now he’d realised once and for all that there was a part of him looking forward to leaving, he kept coming across all the things that he definitely wasn’t going to miss.

About to close his briefcase, he found his hand hovering over the Minister’s envelope, dropped onto his desk with a lighter heart at the time than it deserved, and left sitting there since. The Russian wasn’t a fool - couldn’t have been, to have got away with what she had for so long - and for all her public shenanigans it was pretty unlikely that she was settling for a life of celebrity and show business, never mind _teaching_. He tapped it thoughtfully with one finger, then shoved it into the briefcase and locked it safely inside, spinning the combination firmly.

For a moment he was tempted to walk home, but the cold air pulled sharply into his lungs as he emerged from the revolving glass doors of HQ, and he found himself scanning the street below for a taxi. They’d driven in that morning, and Bodie’d taken the car home when he left, Doyle more than happy to cede the last bits and bobs of organising their flat’s removal to him. 

He’d thought once that they’d die together in that flat - in fact what with the attention of one villain and another he’d thought so several times, a few more immediate than the others - and he still couldn’t quite believe that Bodie was as sanguine about their departure as he pretended to be. Of all the places he’d ever lived, their flat had been the one that lasted, its newly modernised interior mellowing with them over the years, turning into _home_.

A yellow light flashed at the end of the road, and he strode towards it, arm held out, habit even now making him key the car’s number into his phone as it stopped, pause to check the status report before he got in. There was no way that he was going to let some chancer disguised as a Hackney carriage forestall their plans now.

Him and Bodie, and a pub on the coast… It’d take a while to learn the ropes, but they’d pick it up, and no room with Bodie in it was inhospitable for long, never mind somewhere that had a bar. It’d keep them busy, be a challenge trying to draw the crowds in without turning the place into some kind of sad English Disneyland like half the pubs seemed to be these days, catering to a thousand squalling brats with a plastic playground.

They wouldn’t get bored - would they?

He glanced down at the briefcase held securely in his lap, pictured the Minister’s envelope, the papers unfolded and thought again of the unlikeliness of it all. The Young Guard? And he was sure he recognised the name of that bloke claiming to be from Manchester…

A germ of an idea flashed at him, and he sat back and let the city streets pass in a blur, Christmas-colour flashing in windows to an almost empty world at this time of night, came to only when the cabbie drew up to a stop, double-parked outside their flat. If Bodie would buy it, maybe everyone’s problems would be solved - _if_ the Minister bought it, in his turn.

The hallway echoed as he stepped inside, even his key rattling in the lock had a sense of echo about it, as if they were abandoning the place to desolation rather than selling it to a young and well-to-do family of four who’d been delighted with its airy rooms and modern kitchen. 

He heeled his shoes off, took off his coat and couldn’t hang it on the rack that was no longer there, so hung it over his arm instead and went off in search of Bodie. The kitchen was dark, so he gave it a miss - not right that, it was usually the first place he went when he got home, but there was barely anything there anymore. Even the fridge was gone, though there might be milk in the coolbox for tea. But first…

Sure enough, there was light under the living room door, and the vague sound of something on the box blathering away. Inside, Bodie sprawled at one end of the sofa, ignoring the portable television on the table in front of him and tapping away at his laptop, and Doyle paused for a moment in the doorway, leaning on the frame, just watching him. 

_One of the last times_ … his treacherous heart whispered at him, giving an extra thump against his chest, even as his head pointed out _we’re neither of us dying - different room’s all it’ll be…_

After a moment Bodie looked up, quirking a smile at him, and nodded at his screen. “Email from Marshall - you remember the first date they had for the brewery tutor was in March?”

Doyle could feel the gears of his brain sliding together, _The Half Moon_ coinciding with CI5, somehow notching smoothly into the same space and life in Bodie, sitting there happily working at both. It wasn’t the end of one thing and the start of another, it was more… adding a new cog that would keep the old engine running. He just had to manoeuvre it more firmly into place, give it some grease to ease it in…

“Doyle?”

“Yeah…” He stepped forward, dropped his coat over the back of the sofa, and sat down, angled himself to face Bodie. “What about it?”

“That Roland bloke who phoned - he’s in the area, and he’s had a cancellation and he can fit us in, but get this - mornings, starting next week. He’s got someone else in the afternoons - but the other pub doesn’t do accommodation, so he’d stay at our place.”

“Bloody ‘ell…” They’d promised themselves a stress-free Christmas - eased into their new life with Burt in the _quiet of deep midwinter_ , as he’d called it, before he headed off for his sunny climes in the new year, and left them to finish getting to grips with the way the brewery worked and the piles of new paperwork they’d no doubt have to familiarise themselves with.

“If we don’t take it, we can keep the March date, but…”

But it would be better to know more sooner, all the better to plan their attack for the hoped-for crowds of summer tourists. Wasn’t like there’d been time for them to swan off on pub courses whilst they were running CI5.

“You’d better say yes then, I suppose,” he said, gloomily. Make a good impression with the brewery, anyway.” He imagined them stuck, sitting at a table with the bloke all day while the business of the real pub went on around them. If they’d had to wait until March at least they could have felt their own way around from the offset, been a part of it all, no matter how many mistakes they made. But a tutor - it’d be like being a kid again, back at school, trying desperately to work out what other people wanted and to get it right for them, and he’d never been much good at that. He knew they needed it, but…

“Glad you said that - I emailed back to say we would, and he’s confirmed. He’s going to get the train down on Sunday. Must be a bit of a hippy - no car.”

“Bodie…”

“Ah, I knew you’d say yes.” Bodie reached out with a socked foot, gave him a shove with it. “It’ll be alright - get it over and done with, yeah? And he works for a brewery - how bad can he be?”

Doyle thought about Marshall, a nice enough bloke alright, but with a penchant for explaining in intricate detail the advantages of one variety of hop over another. “Hmmn…”

“C’mon Ray - it’ll be fine. He’ll hang around for a month, teach us what we need to know, and bugger off to leave us to it.”

It would. It would be fine. 

“Yeah - alright.” He nodded, let the gears slide together again. “Listen, I’ve ‘ad a thought about Anna and her mates…”

Bodie stilled. “I knew you wouldn’t let that go. You wanna fight for it after all?”

“No.” Doyle shook his head uncompromisingly. “Like I said - there’s no point. But what if we took it on as part of a consultancy? _Our_ consultancy, our rules. ”

“A con…” Bodie’s eyes narrowed. 

“Yeah yeah, I know - we were going to finish by Christmas and it’d be fun and games from then on, but this way we get _our_ cake and eat it too. It’s up to us when we work, and what on - and we don’t need to shoehorn everything in to other people’s inboxes to see it properly finished.”

“You’re a scheming little devil, aren’t you? Bad as the old man, finger in every pie…” Bodie gave him another nudge with his foot, so Doyle grabbed it, feeling Bodie tense in automatic defence against ticklishness, began pressing his thumbs firmly up the centre of his sole instead. The more relaxed he was…

Bodie tipped the lid closed on his laptop, slid it over to the coffee table, and let him get on with it, settling more firmly into the corner of the sofa, and lifting his other foot into Doyle’s lap as well. “You sure you don’t just fancy the Russian?”

“Bodie…”

“No mate, I’ve heard what happens with you old men when…”

“Bo- _die_ …” He might be old, he might even be officially retiring in two days’ time, but he’d never be too far gone to recognise that tone in Bodie’s voice, so he let go of Bodie’s feet and twisted himself around - more slowly than he’d once been able to, but just as certainly - and then lowered himself heavily on top of him, for the _whoof_ of air that left Bodie’s lungs, for the half-smile, half-laugh on his face as Doyle did it, and because it was much easier to kiss him from above.

“Consultancy, eh?” Bodie said again when they finally separated for air, and Doyle had propped himself up on one elbow. “I knew you’d run rings around ‘em if you wanted to.”

“Yeah, well…” They still had to convince the Minister, but Doyle had a feeling that might not be as hard as it could have been. “You’re supposed to keep your mind active when you retire, aren’t you? It’s either this or Sudoku…”

“You and me, a pub in the countryside, and a few puzzles to work on at the kitchen table. Now _that_ ,” Bodie said, “is what I call retirement…”

The last two days passed quickly. The Minister was just as amenable as Doyle had hoped - in fact he left their meeting looking as if it had been his idea in the first place, which made Doyle suspicious, and Bodie elbow him as they saw the man out yet again - and they were able to pack up this file and that file, and both keep their secure access and clearance in a speed of bureaucracy that had probably never been seen before. 

They were seen off from HQ on Friday night in a last minute flurry of agents and unofficial toasts in malt scotch and mineral water, depending on who was on duty, and with an even more surprising moment of tears from Salma. Doyle gave her a hug, and made her promise to keep in touch - Bodie gave her a great smacking kiss on the cheek, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around so that she batted at him and laughed, and by the time their small crowd reached the door, she’d blown her nose and was waving with the best of them. 

“You’re not going to cry too, are you?” Bodie asked, supercilious to the end, as he slid into the driver’s seat of the Merc, but there was a glint to his eyes that was neither mischief nor reflection from the streetlights, so that Doyle couldn’t take him seriously, and they exchanged rueful grins before driving away, careful not to look back.

They said a final goodbye to the flat that night too, in a naked tangle of limbs that began in front of their last fire, and turned into a bout of nostalgia that took them, laughing, from room to room before making it upstairs to bed, and finishing softly, seriously, in the London-shadowed dark of their first home together.

 

**Chapter Three**

By the time they were ready to leave town, their final bits and pieces stowed expertly on the removal van first thing, keys to their flat handed in, _i_ s dotted and _t_ s crossed, it was midday, and traffic was already building up on the M25, hopeful holiday-makers heading out to the country for a white weekend, despite being asked to stay home out of the weather.

Tiny flakes of snow were well and truly falling by the time they got to the Dorset border, the world around them white and grey and occasionally headlight-yellow, and the snowploughs seemed to have given up at the junction to Higher Downsey, the road covered in a layer of snow that had been driven through and refrozen enough times to be treacherous even without the fresh snowfall. Bodie drove slowly, but they slipped and skidded their way down anyway, the last slide making them overshoot their turn to _The Half Moon_ by a dozen yards, stopping perilously close to a tree and only just a safe distance from the ditch by the side of the road.

Doyle released his hold on the dashboard as Bodie reversed back, tyres briefly spinning before they found their grip again. “I thought you didn’t get this on the coast,” he said, more to distract himself from the nearly-road just behind them than anything else. If some other idiot was coming down and couldn’t stop… “Whose idea was this, anyway?”

“Yours,” Bodie said shortly, turning the wheel slowly and carefully and pulling them into the comparative safety of the driveway up to the pub, and Doyle knew him well enough to drop it. Bodie’d driven whilst being shot at, whilst firing his own gun, whilst doing a hundred along the motorway in pursuit _and_ whilst being pursued - neither of them had driven often enough on snow like this to feel happy with it, especially where the roads seemed to do nothing but slope downwards.

After a few more harrowing moments, Bodie pulled up in front of the pub and turned to him with a flourish and a grin - relief at having survived the journey, Doyle thought, but more than that too. Bodie was glad to be there at last, starting their new life as pub keepers - the new cog sliding in with the old machinery, he reminded himself, not retired, it wasn’t that they’d _retired_. It had taken Doyle a while to realise that Bodie’d genuinely been looking forward to it all, far more than he himself had, to remember that it had been Bodie’s idea in the first place, and that Bodie must have had his own reasons for wanting it. 

“Well - might as well go in and make it look busy,” Bodie said, opening his door and letting in a snow-flaked gust. They were the only vehicle there, even though the lights were on in the pub itself, a golden glow against the night that… yeah, that maybe would come to feel like home, if only because Bodie was there.

This was their life, now.

Doyle grunted, made sure his scarf was tightly tucked into his jumper and coat, and followed. 

“Mucker!” The door burst open and what seemed like a crowd of people, but was only Burt, emerged into the chill air in front of them. His greeting was as effusive as ever, and Doyle let himself be slapped as heartily on the back as Bodie was, gripped Burt’s arm briefly in his own warm _hello_ , finding himself genuinely pleased to see him again. “Thought you might not make it, you know - it’s bloody cold out here!”

“Thought we might not make it once or twice too,” Bodie was able to say now that they were safely back on more firm terra firma, shooting a glance that Doyle caught in the spirit it was meant - _yeah, me too_ , Bodie was saying, as he had so many times over the years. “You never told us about all this, you know!”

“Ah, you should have seen it this morning, mucker, you should have seen it this morning! What have you got to bring in?”

Burt grabbed their bags from the back seat without further ado, left them to their briefcases - _Never touch the things, mucker!_ \- and led the way properly inside. Doyle pushed Bodie ahead of him with a hand on his back, left it there until they opened the door into the main bar itself, gave him a couple of solid pats and then prepared to face their new world properly.

“Right - what’ll you have?” Burt asked, dropping their bags in a corner and sliding behind the bar, reaching out to the blonde standing beside the pumps. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her into their little group. “You remember Brooklyn? Best barmaid a bloke could have beside him!”

“Bar _tender_ ,” Brooklyn corrected him gently, in what seemed to be an old argument judging by Burt’s knowing grin, but she smiled a hello at them, still a girl of few words, and let herself be cheerfully squeezed. 

“What d’you recommend?” Doyle asked, scanning the pumps for anything he remembered from the summer. Fathoms was a relatively small brewery, but Burt had gone into contract with them not just because they were local and keen to fit in with him rather than simply insisting he conform to them, but because they provided a startling array of beer, and weren’t put off by landlords who wanted guests on top of that. Burt had taken full advantage, and he was almost dazzled by the choice.

“We’ve got _Give You Joy!_ for Christmas,” Burt said, without necessarily answering the question, but Doyle nodded at him anyway - they’d have to try it sooner or later, if they were going to sell it. Brooklyn collected three glasses from under the bar, and began filling one from a pump, and Doyle gazed at the clip featuring a tall blond man in what looked like a naval uniform, and a smaller swarthier man, more disreputable but just as cheerful as the first. What they had to do with Christmas was anyone’s guess, but Doyle took his pint when it was passed to him, waited until Brooklyn, at Burt’s insistence, had added a half for herself, and raised his glass happily enough in toast to them all.

“To Christmas,” he suggested, but Burt shook his head and smiled.

“To the new owners - long may they reign!”

“I’ll drink to that,” Bodie said, tapping Doyle’s glass and catching his eye. “To the new owners!”

Doyle gave a cheerful nod, feeling the warmth of the pub, of Burt’s gaze and of all Bodie’s hopes, sinking into him, and drank. It tasted something… something like drinking Christmas cake, rich and fruity, but not bad - not bad at all. 

There was a real Christmas tree in a corner by the juke box, reaching tall to the ceiling, and Doyle could swear he smelled the piney, spruce scent from there. It was decorated in every colour of the rainbow, nothing tasteful or elegant about it, wreathed around with strings of coloured fairy lights, and there was even a toilet-roll Santa Claus on one of the branches, which sent him back to school for the second time in as many days, reminded him that Bodie’d once found one in an old box from home, tissue paper faded and tatty, smiling face barely visible any more, but the cotton wool beard as soft and fluffy as it had ever been. 

_It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas_ , he hummed to himself, took another mouthful of his pint. _Give you Joy!_ indeed... 

Burt nodded them to a table, and Doyle gave Brooklyn a wink which made her smile shyly and duck her head, and followed him over, shedding his coat and sitting down on the bench by the wall just as Bodie did. _Old habits_ , he thought - they had the widest view of the room there, and no one to step up behind them.

“Took me years to stop doing that,” Burt said knowingly, “Even then it was just a different self-preservation - when Sal realised I was doing it, she’d slide an arm around, all friendly, and I’d find out later she’d stuck something on the wall over my head. I’d turn around and see some paper cut-out or message. This time of year it’d be reindeer antlers…” His voice faded slightly, but when he caught Doyle looking at him he turned up his smile again, as if it’d never slipped.

He and Bodie launched into cheerful reminiscence of less legal days, and Doyle settled back and looked around. They were the only people in the lounge, and he assumed from the way Brooklyn was leaning back against the bar, one finger twirling a strand of hair, looking dreamily into the distance, that there was no one in the snug either. It was still early, but where the glow of a streetlight coned down to the ground, he could see snow falling more heavily again, a soft whirl of flakes.

Burt caught him looking. “Been on and off all day, that lot. You’d just think it was gone, the sun’d come out, and then there’d be clouds flooding in with more of it after all.”

“Does this happen often? I thought we were moving to the tropical coast, down here.”

Burt grinned. “We’ve had a fair run of it the last few years, so you never know - you never know, mucker!” He shook his head dramatically and tutted. “Must be all this global warming they’re on about…”

“Don’t get him started,” Bodie interrupted, “You’ll hear all about it if you’re not careful - and the cost of GM crops and killing ickle lambikins and piggy-wigs!”

“Shut up, Bodie…” Doyle shook his head - the bugger’d never take him seriously, and if they didn’t _act_ … Well, maybe that was something he could work on now, add it to the suddenly long list of _what to do when they were retired_ … “It doesn’t mean we’ll all be on the beach in winter, you know,” he started, then stopped himself. He supposed everyone had their own _varieties of hops_ , after all.

“D’you still do grub in the winter, then?” Bodie asked, “Must be all this talk of bacon and mint sauce making me hungry!”

Doyle wrinkled his nose at him, wind-up or no wind-up. “Philistine - is there anything that doesn’t make you hungry?” 

“We do the food all year around,” Burt said, peaceably. “Though we turn it down over winter. There’s still a few locals who come in to eat - your mate Modger’s one of ‘em,” he added to Doyle. “Half the local lads wouldn’t get a decent hot meal otherwise, so cook’s got…”

“Great!” Bodie stood up and slapped Burt on the back, “I thought I could smell something - Cal’s got quite the knack with a nice lambikin I seem to remember. I’ll just…” He gestured towards the louvered door to the kitchen, winked at Doyle, and strode off, swinging it open so that they caught a glimpse of gleaming steel surfaces and steam above a cooking range, and vanishing.

Burt raised an eyebrow at Doyle, grinned broadly, and leaned back on his chair so that he faced the doorway. “Now you’ll see something,” he said.

A moment later Bodie came backing out in a hurry, hands held up placatingly, followed by a small round woman with her fists firmly on hips and a scowl on her face, eyeing him with suspicion. “You can come into this kitchen once a day to check the menu,” she was saying, “And that’s all! I’m not having scones and sausages and half a roast chicken disappearing from under my nose if I can help it - I know lads like you, I do!”

Burt was openly chuckling now, and the woman cast a frowning eye at him too. “It took me long enough to get _him_ trained!”

“Bodie - meet Joanna, our winter chef. Cook’s like a dream, she does, and she’s too smart to let you bother her!”

“Flattery won’t work!” Joanna sniffed, running her eyes over each of them in turn, ending with Doyle. “And you - you need fattening up, you’d better have the lasagne. Shame there’s no salad at this time of year for yer mate.”

“Salad!” Bodie began, but she was gone again, the kitchen door swinging behind her as if she’d just faced down all the bad guys in town and won.

Doyle gave in and let himself grin just as widely as Burt had been, catching Bodie’s eye and reaching out to poke him in the stomach as he came and sat down again. “Told you,” he said, “Too many sausages already!”

“That’s my manly physique that is - it’s all muscle underneath, _and_ you know it…”

“Muscle up top, too…” Doyle began, enjoying Bodie’s wounded pout.

“She’s alright, is Joanna,” Burt interrupted, perhaps worried that she’d offended one or both of them beyond redemption. “Comes up from the town every winter whilst Cal’s away.”

“Where does Cal go, then?”

“Australia usually - sometimes New Zealand, sometimes South Africa. Anywhere with a bit of surf and sunshine at this time of year.”

For all their new life began today, as the motivational posters used to say, Doyle felt a bit of sympathy for that kind of desire, a chill still in his bones from their long and slow drive across country. “He’s not got it wrong this year, does he?”

But Bodie was clearly still focussed on his wronged stomach. “You mean I’m not allowed in the kitchen until spring comes?” he asked, and Burt chuckled yet again.

“You’ve got your own kitchen next door,” he reminded them, “Pinch all your own food that you want, and leave Joanna’s larder alone! She’s right, too,” he added, “The profit margin goes right up in the winter, when there’s less of us buggers in there pinching stuff, even when we don’t sell as much.”

“It’s our profit…” Bodie muttered rebelliously, “Our pub…”

“Right up to the threshold of the Winter Kitchen,” Burt agreed, eyes twinkling. “You wait until you’ve tried her cooking, you’ll forgive her anything.”

Bodie shot him a disbelieving look.

“It’s true - none of this new-fangled gor-met stuff for her, it’s all about fattening you up with as much stodge as you can eat - no matter what she says about salad.”

“’e doesn’t need encouraging for that,” Doyle interjected, “Just as well he’s banned.”

“Tell you what, we’ll try the _Lighthouse_ next - that’ll set you up to be in a forgiving mood,” Burt offered, gathering their empty glasses and heading back to the bar. 

“ _Damn the Lighthouse_ ,” Bodie reached out and twisted a bar mat around to read the name of the beer, sliding it over to their side of the table. “That’s been around years, hasn’t it? You alright, then?”

Doyle blinked at the change of subject, felt Bodie’s leg press a little closer to his, and looked up at him. “Course I am,” he said, “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“No reason. Here you go.” He presented him with the _Lighthouse_ beermat, and Doyle looked down to the one that he’d been carefully shredding.

“Too long cooped up in the car,” he said defensively, “Need some exercise…”

“You can go over and hump your furniture into place when you’ve finished with dinner then,” Burt said, returning just in time to overhear, and putting a deep, dark pint in front of each of them. “D’I tell you your removal blokes turned up a couple of hours ago? Made better time than you did! Worked well at this end too - their company’s booked them in to stop over, they couldn’t get the van out again.”

“They didn’t have to fight Montgomery the Estate Agent,” Bodie pointed out, “And spend nearly an hour signing away their first born just to hand over some keys.”

Doyle looked at him, amused. “Something you’re not telling me, mate?”

“Wash your mouth out!” Bodie said, looking shocked and disturbed both, “I was a good boy me - not a Bodie sprog out there!”

Doyle grinned and turned back to Burt. “Are you sure we’re not turning you out when you don’t need to be? You’re gonna be here for weeks yet…” 

Burt shook his head. “You boys make yourself at home over there - believe it or not I actually fancy the idea of one last Christmas here in the pub. Sal and I lived here for nearly two years before we got next door fit for anything better than the rats. Had the main suite - the honeymoon suite, we called it. We used to look out the window, over to the island, make all the plans in the world, back then…” 

“Any of ‘em come true?” Doyle asked, wondered if he was tempting fate by asking.

“Every single one that mattered, mucker, every single one.” Burt paused, sniffed, then turned to look Doyle right in the eye. “It’s not a bad place to be, this, you know. With the right person.”

And Doyle didn’t even blush, but nodded slowly, the feeling of Christmas still in him. 

 

**Chapter Four**

Next morning the sun was still nowhere to be seen, the snow covering the Dorset landscape had been refreshed, and Kirrin Island was a bare smudge of white against the darkness of the sea. 

Doyle stared out from their new bedroom window, towelling robe pulled tightly over pyjamas, a pair of socks already on his feet. The central heating was on, but there was a chill radiating from the glass of the window, and if he had any sense he’d close the curtains and get back into bed where Bodie was still quietly snoring away, but there was something mesmerising about the morning. The air seemed blue-tinged with the weather, dim light reflecting dim light and making it another world entirely, an alien landscape.

Their new alien landscape.

He breathed it in, let his mind still with it, feet planted, grounding him to their new bedroom, house, _life_ , reaching out with his senses, above and below, and all around…

“You ready for a cuppa yet?”

He jumped despite himself, took a deep breath and sniffed, turning back to the bedroom. So much for his senses…

Bodie was leaning up on his elbows, still sleep-rumpled and warm looking, blinking at the morning. 

“Lazy sod,” Doyle said amiably, but he padded across to the door anyway, giving Bodie’s foot a tweak through the bedclothes as he passed. “Get dressed and come down for it…”

 _Stairs go in the same direction_ he chided himself, when he realised he was thinking yet again _this isn’t home, and that isn’t familiar_. He’d never thought of himself as a creature of habit, but somewhere along the way of getting old, it seemed to have snuck up on him, and he was strangely unsettled when he had to double back on himself to get to the kitchen at the bottom of the stairs, rather than walk straight along the hallway as he had at home. Their old home. _A cup of tea would go down in the same direction too_ \- he paused to piss in the downstairs toilet, washed his hands in a basin that was twice the size he was used to. _Shut up and get on with it, Doyle…_

Roland would be in on the 11.30 train, if it was still running, and he wasn’t entirely sure how they were going to get from _The Half Moon_ to the station in Dorchester to start with. He didn’t fancy getting the Merc back up the hill in these conditions - maybe Burt had snowchains that he used or something… He pottered about the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards that were in the wrong places, gradually accumulating everything he wanted to put breakfast together. Burt had stocked them up with enough for a month’s worth of snow by the looks of it, and what with the removal men having been hired to unpack their furniture as well as cart it, it was perhaps the sense of home-from-home about the place that was throwing him as much as its differences - maybe it would have been better if they’d not brought their own bed, their own fridge and plates and cutlery.

Shut up, Doyle…

Upstairs the toilet flushed, water gurgled through drains, and eventually footsteps padded heavily on the carpeted stairs, and Bodie appeared in the doorway, dressed and ready for the day - a day in the cold, by the look of it. Had he seen those corduroy trousers before? The fisherman’s jumper he knew, and the ubiquitous polo neck underneath…

“Know me again, will you?” Bodie asked, sounding amused.

“Off out to build a snowman, then?” Doyle countered, moving again to break eggs into a mug and transferring them to the frying pan that had been heating on the stove. “Don’t forget your woolly mittens…”

Bodie was watching him now, smug smile on his face. “Not going anywhere until I’ve had me breakfast - knew there was a reason I married you!”

Doyle shot him the look that deserved, tipped his head in the direction of the teapot. “Pour us another cup, would you?”

“I’ve not had me first yet!” Bodie managed to sound outraged and cheerful at the same time, and Doyle finally relaxed to the familiarity of them both in the kitchen together, waking up to the world and the day ahead at the same time.

“Reckon we’ll get the car up the hill?” Bodie asked, lifting an eyebrow in enquiry when Doyle grinned, their telepathy another familiar comfort.

Doyle shook his head without explaining. “See what Burt reckons,” he said, “He must have had to deal with it before. They’re probably all running up and down it from Downsey as we speak.”

“No way - country’s come to a standstill, wrong kind of snow on the tracks… Hey, that’s a thought! Maybe Roland won’t make it today at all!”

“What, not come at all? It was your idea!”

“Yeah, but it’s Christmas next week - dunno why he couldn’t have hung on until January…”

“You were the one said yes to him,” Doyle reminded him again, sliding eggs onto toast, bacon onto plates, and passing the whole lot over to _their_ wooden table in the middle of _their_ kitchen. They sat down, both angled to face the window where the snow had stopped falling again, except for the tiny flurries that overbalanced from the rooftop, or a tree branch, and ate in comfortable quiet for a while.

Their view sloped down over the hill, past patio and garden, the high stone wall that separated them from the pub, gradually lowering until it seemed to vanish entirely in the bushes towards the edge of the cliff, and from then on everything was ocean and sky, grey merging to grey at the horizon, though the sea became a darker stripe closer to land. They were too low to see Kirrin Island from this angle, and even the lights of Weymouth, way to the east, were blotted out.

“It’s all a bit _peaceful_ , isn’t it,” Bodie said at last, plate all but licked clean, leaning back with his mug of tea in one hand. 

“Yeah…”

There was a pause. “It’s alright, though, isn’t it?” Bodie said at last, and then in a rush when Doyle looked at him, “Nice, yeah..? What d’you think…Ray?”

Doyle pushed himself away from the table, took their plates to the sink, and came back to stand behind Bodie, wrapping an arm around his neck so that Bodie leaned his head back into his chest, lifted his free hand to hold Doyle in place, and Doyle brought his other hand to tangle them still more firmly together. With the kitchen light on they were reflected in the window, against the snow and the barely familiar grey landscape, haloed together by the golden glow of the kitchen.

“I think we’re getting old…” he said, thoughtfully, and tightened his arms slightly, keeping hold, keeping a close hold. “But yeah… This is alright. This is nice.”

o0o

They found Burt ensconced happily in front of a roaring fire in _The Half Moon’s_ lounge, Sunday paper spread around him, juke box cheerful with Christmas songs and carols, and a plate of what looked like home-made ginger cake just waiting for Bodie’s fingers to pinch, despite breakfast.

“Perk of being snowed in on a Sunday,” he grinned at them. “Not likely to be many in today, not even the local crowd, can take it a bit easy!”

“Roland not coming, then?” Doyle asked hopefully, could feel Bodie ready to cheer beside him.

“Ah no, mucker - _I’m_ taking it easy, _you’re_ off out to Dorchester!”

“Hmmn… road up alright then, is it?”

“Terrifying,” Burt said comfortably. “I wouldn’t go out on it unless I had to.”

“And you don’t have to,” Bodie acknowledged, scowling. “It’s alright for you retired blokes...”

“Wait a minute - how’d you get the papers, then?” Doyle asked, knowing there was more to come. Bodie had realised too, from the way he was eyeing Burt. But even if there wasn’t Doyle knew they’d brave the road back up together.

“Sam Forest brings ‘em up from the village when he gets his - he’s got a Landrover that’d make it up the Eiger in third gear if you asked it to. He’ll give you a lift into Dorchester - said he’d be by in about twenty minutes. Nice bloke.”

“Sam… that the guy with the wife with…?” Bodie sketched a shape in the air.

“That’s Clarry alright!” Burt grinned, “And four kids, come January!”

“Better her than me…” Bodie began, “Hang on - Sam Forest from Firrester Farm?” 

“Reckons the name was half the reason he bought the place - he was going to pretend it came from his great-great-great-something grandfather. Used to belong to Sal’s family actually - well, most of the land round here did - all sold years ago.”

“The organic farmer,” Doyle remembered, “I wouldn’t mind meeting him…”

“Told you so,” Bodie said to Burt with a roll of his eyes, “Don’t get ‘im started…”

“He’s not got it paying yet,” Burt said, ignoring Bodie with what Doyle recognised as the ease of experience. “Not been here long enough. We’re hoping they’ll make it and stay. They take in guests on the side - nice little bed and breakfast it is, Clarry does a good job.” He waved at the ginger cake. “This is hers, in point of fact.”

“Only polite to try it before we see her husband then,” Bodie decided, and finally took a piece from the plate. It might have been Doyle’s eyes on him that had held him so long in the first place, but it might not have, because he watched as Bodie scoffed an entire thick piece in three mouthfuls, Doyle’s evil eye doing nothing to stop him. Doyle broke a corner off one slice for himself, just so he could agree that it was good - and it was, moist and rich and just the way ginger cake should be. 

They took a piece of the paper each - _Ah, look - Christmas travel misery already_ , Bodie said with a grin, turning to a page on which a bellydancer with very little belly shaped a sinuous S - and settled back. Doyle read grimly about kettle tactics and closed his eyes over the firms supplying lethal injection drugs to the US - CI5’d warned them for years that it was a media storm waiting to happen. It had probably only come out because it was Christmas, he thought gloomily, it wouldn’t take long for the festive Londoners to dismiss such thoughts in favour of holly and mistletoe decorations from M and S, and it’d all just carry on... He turned to the latest WikiLeaks, kept his teeth gritted, and wondered how long it would be before he could put it all aside as somebody else’s job the way Bodie seemed to. Even now he could feel their Russian spy calling from his briefcase, felt the pull of wanting to read the files just one more time for something they’d missed, some tiny detail…

“Pony and trap to Dorchester…?” a voice called suddenly from the doorway, and a tall redhead let the door fall shut behind himself, wafting a quick chill of air into the room, and strode across to the fire. “You must be Ray and Bodie,” he said, holding out his hand, “I’m Sam - Burt said you needed a lift over?”

“Pony and trap?” Bodie asked, as they shook hands, “I hope you’re kidding, mate…”

“It’s not much warmer, I’ll grant you - heater’s only just keeping up, but she’ll get us there without any problems if we’re lucky.”

“Good of you to offer,” Doyle said, “We’ll know better than to park down here next time.”

“No one does,” Sam said cheerfully, “We don’t expect this sort of thing in England any more. I remember my dad telling me about the winter of sixty-three - snow to the top of two-storey houses, he said I didn’t believe him, but there was a programme about it not long ago. Amazing!”

Doyle, who remembered it all for himself, nodded and smiled and felt old. He’d been a teenager at the time, maybe he was the same age as this lad’s father - but he wouldn’t change a year of having that amazing winter for a year of new youth now. Mind you, it hadn’t all been fun and games, there’d been no central heating back then, and his mate Tom had woken up with frostbite one morning from going to bed by the window with his socks still wet from the snow - and there’d been no fixtures for weeks…

“You with us, mate?” Bodie slapped him on the back, pushing him into motion towards the door, and handing him his coat. “Gets a bit like this sometimes,” he added conspiratorially to Sam. “Old age. Getting on a bit you see…”

“I’ll get you on a bit,” Doyle began threateningly, following him out and scooping up a handful of snow. He managed to shove it halfway down between Bodie’s scarf and his skin, enjoyed the shriek of surprise, and the impossibility of retaliation with Sam’s Landrover chugging away, waiting for them.

“Can’t keep the kids out of it,” Sam said calmly, as he turned the vehicle competently along the drive and began easing it up the slope towards the main road. “They’ve been outside ever since it began, at one adventure or another.”

“How old are they?” Doyle asked, trying to picture the youngsters he’d seen in the pub that summer.

“Seven, five and three. Tad - that’s the three year old - was a bit wary at first, but when he saw the others desperate to be in it every second he wouldn’t stay away. He’s worse than they are, now.”

“And another one on the way, Burt said?”

“Maggie, after Clarry’s mum this time - due towards the end of January… Here we are - the A35, open and almost clear.”

They swung out onto the main road and immediately picked up pace, the tyres feeling grit under them and settling into a steady rhythm on the road, so that they settled into a more comfortable small-talk too, one that Bodie, who hated being driven at the best of times, finally joined in. They gave Sam their standard _civil servant_ line, let him think they’d been something minor and bureaucratic at Whitehall, and talked about Sam’s farm, the pub, the locals.

Despite the better roads, they were still slow going, especially when they met other vehicles to be negotiated. They passed half a dozen drivers chatting on their mobile phones at the same time as steering through the snow, and Doyle scowled out the window. “Bad enough in good weather,” he grumbled, and Bodie ruffled his hair from the back seat. By the time they were turning into the carpark at Dorchester Station, the train was drawing in - they’d be just in time.

“I’ll wait here with the car,” Sam suggested, “If you two want to go and meet him.”

There weren’t many people emerging onto the snowy platform. A woman clambered out with a rucksack. A young man leapt out, heedless of the snow, whistling, and strode off with his hood pulled firmly over his head and a bobble hat on over that. An old man climbed down with difficulty, helped by a station porter who’d miraculously, Doyle considered, appeared from nowhere. Maybe Roland had missed the train after all.

Then, right at the front of the train, one final passenger got out. He was short and burly, and he had a beard that made Doyle think of a sailor - or maybe Captain Birdseye. He glanced up and down the platform, suitcase on wheels behind him, and as he came closer Doyle realised that his eyes were same deep blue as Bodie’s, his thick hair sprinkled with grey.

“Mr Roland?” he asked, and when the man nodded, reached out his hand. “You made it then! This is Bodie, I’m Doyle - Ray Doyle.” It felt odd not to getting out his ID as he said that, proving it, especially to a stranger. 

“Just Bodie?” Roland asked, shaking hands. “I can’t call you that for a month!”

“Oh, he’s got other names,” Doyle said, quirking an amused glance at Bodie, “He doesn’t answer to them.”

“Really?” said Roland, in rather a chilly tone, so that Doyle blinked. Not quite as friendly as he seemed, then.

More polite talk, Doyle thought, but not quite as amiable as it had been with Sam, and he let Bodie get on with it for a while as he led the way off the platform to the carpark, where Sam was waiting to take the case from Roland - _John_ Roland, as it turned out. Didn’t bode well for days stuck behind a school desk he thought - and he could just imagine Bodie outside the headmaster’s door… which finally made him grin, so that Sam smiled back in unknowing complicity, and Bodie glared at him for being stuck with the diplomatic work, and with Roland in the back seat.

“I’ll be glad to get indoors,” Roland said loudly, over the noise of the engine, perhaps trying to make friendly conversation with them all, “You’re a bit out in the sticks here, aren’t you!”

Beside him, Sam bristled, and Doyle turned his head in his own effort to be friendly. “It’s in the country,” he said, “But it’s a friendly place. We only got here yesterday ourselves, and Sam here offered to drive us in to fetch you from the station - no way our car would have made it in one piece.”

“You don’t work for the pub then?” Roland asked Sam, “I thought you must do - most good country pubs have an odd job man if they can.”

“I farm up the hill,” Sam said shortly, “Burt’s a friend of the family.”

“Good for you - suppose someone’s got to do it.” He turned his head to talk to Doyle again. “You think you’ll enjoy working in a pub?”

“Better had do,” Bodie said from the back seat, “Since we’ve bought it.”

“Oh, you’re not lease-holders, then? I thought you must be…”

“You think a lot of things,” Doyle said with a smile into the rear-view mirror, hoping he sounded as cutting as he felt, knowing at the same time that he shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, let his temper get away with him. “Didn’t Marshall tell you?”

“Most people who call on me for help are lease-holders,” Roland said, “Young bucks mostly, living their dream of managing a pub. They don’t know it’s not all quiz nights and drinking with the locals until I’ve shown them a thing or two!”

“We’re looking forward to getting started,” Doyle lied through his teeth, “I’m sure you’ll be very… informative…” He could feel Bodie giving him one of his own _cool it, Ray_ , looks in the mirror, ignored it happily. “I must say, I was expecting someone younger myself…”

“Takes an old dog to teach old dogs new tricks,” Roland said, without any sign of disturbance, and subsided back against the seat to watch the world go by outside. “I hope we’re not going to have more snow, it’ll play havoc with me trying to get to the _Red Lion_ in Weymouth every afternoon...”

 

**Chapter Five**

Burt was behind the bar when they got in, his lunch crowd consisting of the two removal men who’d got up very late that morning, after Bodie’d offered them a virtually free bar the previous evening as an apology for getting them stuck overnight in the depths of Dorset, and a cluster of young lads that Burt explained were from a few of the local farms. “Been out tobogganing,” he said, and Doyle eyed them sideways.

“They old enough to be in the bar?” he asked quietly, not wanting to start their career by being soft on underage drinkers, but not wanting to alienate the locals either.

“Not one of ‘em younger than nineteen,” Burt said cheerfully, “I promise. I’ve known most of their parents since they were about nineteen too - now there’s a sobering thought, eh Bodie? Over twenty years of earning an honest crust!” He turned to Roland. “Now, you must be from Fathoms - I’m Burt Foster!”

“John Roland - pleased to meet you at last. I’ve heard about this place from Mike, never had a chance to get down here until now.”

Doyle watched bemused as Burt seemed to get on great guns with Roland, barely able to get a word in edgewise as they chatted about the current seasonal line-up. Eventually they both drew breath at the same moment, and he cut quickly in, determined to be hospitable. They were going to be spending a lot of time with Roland, he’d better make an effort. 

“What can I get you?” he asked, “Shall we see if Burt’ll let me at the pumps?”

“A lemonade would do nicely,” Roland said quickly, lifting his head as they all three looked at him in surprise. “I know - no one quite believes a brewery man who doesn’t drink, but I had a bad experience once when I was a lad, and somehow I never managed to get started after that. Works for me now, of course - healthier than most men I know!”

“A lemonade it is,” Burt said smoothly. Now - you’re not going to start sessions today, are you?”

Roland looked from Bodie to Doyle. “I hadn’t planned to - it’s usually helpful for me to settle in first, get a feel for the place, and an idea of the current clientele.”

“ _And_ it’s Sunday,” Bodie said in a disapproving tone, and Doyle turned away to hide his grin.

“Tomorrow, then,” Burt said quickly. “Don’t you two want to get settled in next door, as well? They only just got in themselves, yesterday,” he explained to Roland, “Still got the world to do, I expect.”

“Good idea - _got to clean our doorstep_ ,” Bodie said, in the German accent that still made Doyle’s eyes widen in amazement that anyone - even Bodie - could think sounded Scottish. “Come on, Ray, _on your bike now_ …”

Doyle let himself be hustled back through the door and into the lightening daylight. There was even a patch of blue sky to the west, and he paused to close his eyes and raise his face to the air, as if he could smell the sun behind the clouds. “Wouldn’t mind a walk actually,” he said, opening his eyes and reaching out to pull Bodie to a standstill. “Fancy some fresh air?”

“Why not? Could take a wander over to Firrester Farm - see if we can pick up some of that ginger cake from Clarry.”

“You ‘aven’t even met her yet, you can’t go begging for food!”

“I did meet her - met her last summer, we passed in the corridor to the toilets!”

“That must have been romantic,” Doyle said, “Throw herself at you, did she?”

“Didn’t need to, I could barely get past… _ow_! It’s a compliment!”

“It’s a good job I know you’re not half the yob you make out you are!”

Bodie crossed his eyes, hunched over and swung his arms low to the ground, just as an ancient estate car pulled into the carpark, it’s headlights sweeping over them as it turned to park by the wall. Doyle caught a glimpse of a startled face behind the wheel, took one look at Bodie’s reddening face and collapsed with laughter back against the building. “That’ll teach you,” he managed, between gasps for air, glad when he was at least saved from having to explain his lunatic partner when the three nineteen year olds came out, gathered up a small pile of toboggans that had been sitting the other side of the door, and began loading themselves into the vehicle.

“Anyway,” Bodie said with dignity, when they were on the move again, through the door in the wall that took them to the front of their own cottage. “Clarry makes ginger cake and things to sell at market, but she didn’t get out yesterday with the snow, so Sam reckons she’s freezing it. I just thought we could take some off her hands…”

“Oh, help a needy local family, is it?”

“I’ve always been known for my good works,” Bodie said primly, passing him his scarf. “Here, wrap this round your face, you don’t want to scare the children…”

“Bastard - now where are you going?”

Bodie was going to the kitchen to find them an apple each - they hadn’t had lunch yet, what with the slow journey there, and Doyle realised suddenly that he was hungry… But if they didn’t go now, there’d be no day left to go walking, and there was always Clarry’s ginger cake at the other end… He took the fruit with a grin of thanks, bit down cheerfully into it, and led them to the end of the drive, smiling even more widely when the sun came out just as they got there.

They turned down the lane, and then onto a public right of way that took them over what Burt had told them was the common, and led to the farm up the hill.

It was good walking in the December sun, after so many days of cloud and snow. Their feet seemed to echo on the frozen path, a rhythm of muffled _thump-shhhh, thump-shhhh_ as they went, and the snow glittered at them in a rainbow of shades, never just white, if you looked at it for long enough, but every shine of colour that ever graced a fairy tale… 

_Happily ever after?_ he wondered, letting his finger hook around Bodie’s for a moment when their hands brushed, glad he hadn’t thought to put on his gloves, despite the cold. Bodie must have thought something similar - _god his hands are cold_ , most likely - because he grasped Doyle’s hand in his, shoved them both into the pocket of his coat, and they walked like that together, for a while.

It was only twenty minutes across the common, and they came to the farmhouse, so that Doyle reclaimed his hand, and stopped to get his bearings. It was built of white stone, and stood strong and Christmas-card beautiful on the hillside. Bodie opened the farm gate and ushered Doyle through to the farmyard, where three children had clearly been busy building a menagerie of snow animals: there were several snow men and - presumably - women, a small flock of snowsheep, and what looked like a giant snow cat and dog surrounded by numerous snow… kittens?

“Look,” Bodie nudged him, “Snow-dinosaur!”

A door slammed at the side of the farmhouse, and there was a sudden frenzy of barking followed by a melodious but stern voice. “Mister! Missus! Settle down - it’s friends!”

“Hello there!” Doyle called, “It’s Clarry, isn’t it?” He crouched down to greet the dogs that had arrived around their feet and were bounding up and down in their excitement, grimacing and twisting his head around as they got in a few licks for good measure.

“Down Missus! Down Mister! I’m so sorry - they’re young…”

“Ah, he loves it,” Bodie said, “He’s been waiting for his bath this last month. I’m Bodie - that’s Ray, somewhere down there…”

“Sam said you might be coming - I thought it might be tomorrow though…”

“Not enough cake left,” Doyle said, straightening, and getting some of his own back. “There was only half a ginger cake…”

Clarry laughed, throwing her head back so that her jacket fell open and they found themselves grinning at each other in appreciation. 

“Come on, then - I’ll put the kettle on, and you can have a rummage in the pantry before I get it all in the freezer…”

They followed her into the big, warm farmhouse kitchen, where Sam was sitting on a laptop at one end of a vast oak table, and the other end was taken up by three children, almost identical except for their sizes.

“They’re never yours,” said Bodie, the eternal flatterer, “You’re not old enough!”

“As old as my tongue, and a little older than my teeth,” she replied, chuckling. “Sit yourselves down now. This is Poppy, Matthew, and Tad - and this one in here,” she added, peeling off her jacket and patting her stomach gently, “Is Maggie.” 

“Maggie’s not big enough to come out yet,” Tad informed them seriously, “He’s still in his cot inside mummy.”

“Maggie’s a _girl_ , you baby,” Matthew corrected, “ _We’re_ boys and Poppy and Maggie and mummy are girls.”

“And you are boys,” Tad explained to Doyle and Bodie, “That means you must have willies, like me and Mat and daddy. Daddy has a big willy. Have you got big willies?”

Doyle could feel himself blushing red, even as he desperately tried to come up with the correct answer, and beside him Bodie had given up and collapsed onto this shoulder, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow so that they couldn’t see him laughing.

“Has that man got a barrassment?” Tad turned and asked his mum, and Clarry leaned over the table to kiss him soundly on his cheek, leaving him rather flustered in turn. 

“Lots of people are embarrassed when you talk about willies,” she said, with an apologetic glance at them, “Don’t forget you’re not supposed to talk to strangers about… things like that.”

“He’s just a baby, he forgets,” Poppy interrupted. “Can we go and play outside again now mummy? We’re warm, we really are?”

“Yes!” Sam shouted from the other end of the table, “For gods’ sake yes, and take the mutts with you!” He looked over at Doyle and Bodie, mischief in his own eyes, “You’re glad you came now, aren’t you?” he added.

“I’m told Clarry’s cake can make up for anything,” Doyle said, shrugging Bodie back to something approximating manners. “You must have your hands full here, though!”

“They’re hard work,” Clarry agreed, filling a kettle and settling it on the Aga stove at the end of the kitchen, “But I wouldn’t be without them. Do you have children yourselves?”

“No,” Doyle said hurriedly, “Never got around to it.”

“They live together, Clarry - you know that.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten,” Clarry said candidly, “Though you might have ‘em from a previous life, I expect. No?”

“No,” Doyle said firmly. “Great place you’ve got here…”

“And she wonders where the kids get it,” Sam grinned, closing his laptop. “We’ll be even busier over Christmas this year too - got guests come down from London for _the Genuine Country Christmas Experience_ \- they don’t know what they’ve let themselves in for…”

“It’s going to be beautiful,” Clarry interrupted, “We’ll go and get the Christmas tree in, and decorate it, and go down to the village for the carol singing…”

Sam shook his head, “I found her in _Country Living magazine_ ,” he said, “Mail order.”

Clarry paused in passing a plateful of cherry-topped biscuits to the table to cuff him lightly across the head. “You wait,” she said, “You’ll be crooning _Silent Night_ like a choir boy, I know you will. No,” she added, “They’re artists, these guests, up from the city to _garner the atmosphere_ all ready to put into _next_ year’s magazines and Christmas cards, apparently.”

“Artists?” Doyle pricked up his ears, “Anyone we might have heard of?”

“Oh, I don’t know - what are they called, Sam?”

“Just shut the computer,” Sam said comfortably. “Come over and ask them some time - open house here, any time you like.”

“I might do that,” Doyle said, “I used to paint a bit…” He could feel Bodie looking at him, looked back at him defensively. “Might ‘ave another go at it sometime, they might give me a few hints…”

“Seems a strange time to come out to the depths of the country for work,” Bodie said, simply, “Do they have friends around here?”

“They say they don’t know a soul,” Clarry said, reaching down to open a door on the Aga and bringing out a rack of fresh scones. “But that’s artists for you - they’re a funny lot. We’ve had some here before, they went mooning around all alone, happy as Larry - whoever he was. They’ll be happy enough, I expect.”

“They should be with everything you’ve got lined up for them,” Sam said, snatching a couple of scones and thrusting them into his pockets. “I’ve got to get off I’m afraid, check the top sheep field before it gets too dark. I’ll see you later?”

“Bound to,” Doyle said, raising his hand in farewell, and Clarry took the opportunity to press a stone cup into his hand.

“I always have mulled wine on the go, this time of year,” she said. “You never know who’ll drop by - and it’s as good an excuse as any. Now, do you…”

There was a plastic rattling at the door, and a cat suddenly shot into the kitchen, all her hairs on end with fear, followed by the door itself bursting open to let in three children and a very excited pair of dogs. The cat fled from the kitchen into a panelled hallway on the other side of the kitchen table, and the dogs followed, taking no notice of Clarry’s stern shout. She jumped up to follow, pushing her way through the shrieking children, and into the hallway, and Doyle stood up too, took a step towards the doorway in case he’d be able to help.

The cat had tried to leap on top of an old grandfather clock, and with a joyous bark one of the dogs sprang too. He flung himself against a polished panel - and even as Doyle watched the panel disappeared, and a dark hole showed in the old wall.

“What in the world…?” he began, then found himself momentarily surrounded as the cat made a dash for the catflap once more, the dogs ran either side of him to follow, still pursued by the children.

“Out of this _house!_ ” Clarry shouted, appearing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, and with a last yelp and squeal they all vanished again, leaving the room in a silence they could almost feel.

“My god, I’m sorry - I swear it’s not a madhouse like this every day… barely every second day, I promise…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bodie was saying, sounding somewhat bemused, but Doyle barely heard him, peering into the hallway behind Clarry.

“Uh - Clarry - is there something…?”

She glanced behind her, and took a deep breath. “Oh yes,” she said, “That’s one of our secret panels. Take a look, if you like.”

 

**Chapter Six**

“A secret panel?” Bodie asked, finally getting up from his seat, looking, Doyle thought to his own amusement, excited at last. “You knew it was there?”

“Oh yes, there’s loads of things like that in this house. I’m careful when I polish that panel, because if I rub too hard there in the top corner it always slides back.”

“What’s behind it?” Doyle asked. The hole was only about the width of someone’s head, and when he leaned over to peer into it all he could see was darkness. The wall itself was about eight inches behind the panelling, and was made of stone.

“Have you got a torch we could borrow?” Bodie asked, “I’ve never seen one of these before!”

“There’s one on the shelf by the door,” Clarry said, turning back to her Aga, and Bodie stepped quickly over the flagstones to get it. 

“Right, let’s ‘ave a look, then…” he said, flicking the switch and aiming it into the hole. Doyle leaned his head closer to see, so that they were both peering in at once, heads pushing together as they jostled for the best angle.

The trouble was, there really didn’t seem to be anything to see. It was all darkness behind, and stone wall. They moved back again, looking at each other in disappointment. 

“Well she knew it was there,” Doyle said logically, but there was a droop to Bodie’s mouth, even if it was accompanied by a wry smile. “She said this place was full of things like that,” he added, wanting to see him excited again, like a little boy waiting for Christmas - _Christmas is here_ , he reminded himself - and was rewarded when Bodie’s eyes lit up again.

They slid the panel back into place and went back to find Clarry. 

“So what other funny things are there in this place, then?” Bodie asked straight away, not even looking at the spread of food Clarry had put on the table.

“Well, there’s a cupboard with a false back upstairs,” Clarry began, handing them each a piece of warm shortbread, as if they were ten years old themselves. “Don’t look so excited - there’s nothing in it at all! And there’s a big stone over there by the fireplace that pulls up to show a hidey-hole. I suppose in the old days people wanted good hiding-places for things.”

Bodie had turned straight away to the stone she pointed out, and Doyle followed more slowly, not really sure that it was right for them to be rummaging through this couple’s house. The stone had an iron ring in it, reminding Doyle of the dungeons on Kirrin Island, and was easily pulled up. Below was a hollowed-out place, big enough to take a small box. It was empty now, but that didn’t seem to dull the light of excitement in Bodie’s eyes.

“Can we see the cupboard, Clarry?” he asked.

“Oh, help yourself - d’you want to find your own way up? I’ve nearly finished here, but I don’t want the rock cakes to burn…”

“Can I give you a hand with anything?” Doyle asked, conscious that they weren’t being very good guests, but Clarry shook her head and flapped her tea towel at him, shooing him up after Bodie. “Up the stairs, turn to the right and go to the second door you see. The cupboard’s at the farther end. Open the door and feel about in the bottom until you come across a dent in the wood. Press it hard, and the false back slides to the side.”

Bodie vanished upstairs almost before she’d finished giving them directions, and Doyle smiled at her and followed more sedately, absently munching shortbread as he went. _Strange place_ , he thought, they’d barely been in the county for twenty four hours, and they were already hunting down trapdoors and secret passageways again…

Bodie had found the cupboard and opened the door by the time he caught up, and they both went down on their hands and knees to press around the bottom to find the dented place. 

“I’ve got it!” Bodie cried after a moment, and Doyle sat back to watch him pressing down hard enough to work the mechanism. There was a creaking noise, and they watched as the false back of the cupboard slide sideways revealing a space behind that was - just - big enough to take a man.

“Barely get you in there…” Doyle began, but it was too late, Bodie was standing up and stepping into the cupboard.

“Great place to hide,” he said, “No one’d ever know. Come on, shut me in.”

Doyle grimaced, not sure he liked the sound of that. Then again, what - famous last words aside - could possibly go wrong when he was right there? Bodie fit himself into the space, pressing back as far as he could, and Doyle slid the back across - sure enough it was as if Bodie had never been there, the wardrobe looked as solid as any old wardrobe, immoveable.

“Bit of a tight fit!” Bodie called, “And dark! Let me out again!”

Doyle pressed on the mechanism again, and Bodie reappeared.

“Go on, you’ve got to have a go - it’s brilliant, this is!” Bodie was positively gleeful, eyes alight, and crinkled at the corners with joy, and Doyle could refuse him nothing.

He wasn’t keen on it, not normally claustrophobic, there was something about the cupboard that nagged at him - not being able to open the mechanism from the inside, perhaps, though surely there must be some way. Who hid in these things, anyway - was it a priest hole? Some poor priest, in fear of his life, and then unable to get out, suffocating in a box he’d got into by himself…

“Very nice,” he agreed, putting his hands on Bodie’s shoulders, and all but pushing him back out the door and downstairs to the warmth of the kitchen, “Come on, we can’t disturb the nice lady all day…”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Clarry said, hearing him, and Bodie shot him a wounded look over another piece of shortbread. “Now, what was it you wanted to take with you?”

They spent a happy ten minutes deciding, Bodie distracted as ever when food was in the offing, Doyle thought tolerantly. They’d go out for a few decent walks when the snow had shifted itself, find some good runs around the hills, maybe.

“Any chance I could come back and look at that cupboard again?” Bodie asked though, as Clarry packed their purchases into cotton bags with _Organic_ written in bold letters on each side. “I’d like to find the mechanism on the inside - didn’t have a chance just now.” He shot Doyle another wounded look.

“You’re regressing, you are,” Doyle said accusingly, but he caught Bodie’s eye, smiled.

“Not for a while I’m afraid,” Clarry said, “That’s the room I’m letting to the artists.”

“Oh.” Bodie sounded ridiculously disappointed again. “Will you tell them about the cupboard?”

“I don’t suppose so,” Clarry sounded amused herself now, “People aren’t usually that interested!”

“What, not interested in secret doors and hidden hidey-holes?” Bodie grinned. “Boring lot, aren’t they? Alright - one more look at the sliding panel in the hall then? Please?”

Score again for Bodie’s pleading pout… Doyle rolled his eyes, and let Clarry press another mince pie on him - though they really shouldn’t be scoffing before lunch - chatted gently with her about the new baby, and where her family were from, harmless, friendly things, because she was a sweet girl, and there was a peace in her kitchen.

“Oi!”

“…met him at work years ago - _decades_ ago…” Doyle looked up.

“Oi - _Doyle_!”

“Your master’s voice?” Clarry asked, mischief in her eyes - maybe not as sweet as all that, Doyle decided. He seemed to forget these days that girls who seemed young to him had probably done an awful lot more than he had at their age.

“More like a three year old I ‘ave to keep a strict eye on,” he retorted, and was about to get up when there was a sudden yelp and a huge crash from the hallway.

“Bodie!” Without even another look at Clarry he pelted through the door and into the hall, came to a stop at the sight of Bodie holding his fingers to his mouth and looking remorseful but in one piece.

“What have you broken now?” he asked, moving to stand beside him, and pull Bodie’s hand into his own - grazed all across the knuckles, but no more harm than that.

“Nothing!” Bodie said indignantly, “I put my hand in the hole…”

“As you do,” Doyle interrupted with a knowing look.

“As all good treasure hunters do,” Bodie corrected him, “…and there was a bit on one of the stones that felt… _wrong_. There was a ridge in it, just big enough that you could grasp it, as if it was _made_ for someone’s fingers - anyway, I pulled it and the whole stone just came out. Surprised me so much I dropped it - that’s all you heard.”

“You… so what’ve you found, then?” Doyle started to lean towards the hole, but Bodie pulled him back.

“Uh-uh-uh - this is _my_ discovery. Wait until I’ve had a go - it’s not easy to get at, you know!”

Doyle backed off, waiting impatiently as Bodie gave his knuckles one more cleansing suck, then reached inside the hole as far as he could, arm practically disappearing, his shoulder filling the space where the panel had been, and his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth just a little so that if Clarry hadn’t been right behind them, Doyle might have leaned forward and kissed it, taken it into his own mouth, Bodie held in place by the panelling…

“A-ha!”

“Bodie! Don’t _do_ that! What’s _a-ha_?”

Bodie was pulling his arm carefully out of the hole, and his hand was indeed clutching something - an old book, bound in dark brown leather, barely even dusty.

“Whatever’s that?” Clarry asked, stepping closer to see, and Bodie offered it to her to open. She shook her head, and so he eased the cover gently open, turned over what seemed to be a blank page, and they all peered down at the thin, brittle paper covered in old brown handwriting.

“I think that’s recipes,” Clarry said at last, “And look - the name at the top - Alice Mary Kirrin… some relation of Burt’s, through Sal…”

“I think there was something else in there,” Bodie said, “But I couldn’t feel far enough down to the bottom. There was something else just out of reach - you have a go, Ray, you’ve got skinnier arms than I have.”

“Skinny…” Doyle muttered, but he took his turn, feeling his heart thump a little faster as he pushed into the space. There was something there alright, a light feather-brush of a something… dead mouse his imagination insisted, he ignored it and caught at whatever it was with his very finger tips, withdrawing carefully, not wanting to drop it in case it disintegrated entirely.

“What is it?” Bodie asked eagerly, like some _Boys Own_ story, Doyle thought, half in mature disgust, half with his own glee. 

Doyle held it out. It was soft, and flat - leather again - and held closed by a thin strip that wrapped it around. Carefully he released the strip, and unrolled the leather. It was a pouch, a few bits of black tobacco still intact, and tucked into one corner, a piece of linen. Bodie took it out whilst Doyle held the pouch, spread it over the flat of his hand.

They stared at it. There were marks and signs on the linen, done in black ink that had hardly faded, but nothing Doyle could make head nor tail of, and from the way he was tilting it up and down to the light, and turning it around, neither could Bodie.

“Déjà vu,” Bodie muttered, tipping it in yet another direction.

“Hold it still,” Doyle instructed, peering closer and wishing he had his glasses with him. “It’s not a map - looks more like a code of some kind. Something someone wanted kept secret, anyway.”

“I don’t like it,” said Clarry, “Look at those marks - it might be devil worship. And look - I’m sure that says _occulta_ \- that’s devil worship, isn’t it?”

“The occult,” Bodie said, trying it out. “Was that what it was called back then?”

“I dunno,” Doyle shook his head. “Either way, it’s not real black magic, is it? There’s no such thing.”

But Clarry gave a shudder and pulled back from it. “I don’t want it in my house,” she said, “Not with the children. You can think I’m daft…”

“Better safe than sorry,” Bodie said comfortingly, putting an arm around her shoulders, “We’ll take it away if you like, see if we can work out what it is.”

“Take the book too then,” she said, “It might be spells - in fact take the lot of it, it’s no use around here and the kids would only ruin it all if they got hold of it.”

“Are you sure?” Doyle asked, “They might be worth money, and they’re from your property.”

“That lot? Couldn’t possibly be worth anything!” Clarry led them back to the kitchen again, went and leaned against the Aga, and clutched its shining silver rail tightly. “Tell you what, if they turn out to be better than the lottery, you come back and talk to us, otherwise - they’re all yours.”

The door opened, and Sam stuck his head in. “I don’t want to hurry you,” he said, “But if you want to be on time for one of Burt’s Sunday lunches, you’ll have to get a move on - do you want a lift back?”

“How long have we been here?” Bodie wondered out loud, and Doyle gave his own little moue of surprise when he glanced at his watch - it was heading for one.

“No Sam, you’re alright - thanks all the same. Do you want to look at this lot before we go, though?”

“What’s that, then?” He leaned through the door to peer at the things Bodie had brought through to the light, obviously not wanting to take his boots off and get involved.

“Black magic,” Clarry said, “I don’t want it in our house.”

“Found ‘em in the secret panel in the hallway,” Bodie explained, “There’s some kind of code - could be anything.”

Sam glanced at Clarry, then looked down at their collection, then back into the grey outside light. “Tell you what, I’ll pop over to the _Moon_ sometime to have a proper look, if that’s where you’re taking them - would that be alright?”

“Fine,” said Doyle, tucking himself into his coat as he said it, “Any time you like. Come on, Bodie, let’s leave them in peace.”

They stepped outside, cold air sliding around them, and into the layers of their clothes. Clouds had covered the sky again, and the snow was duller without the sun to nip it into colour and shine, but it was still a kind of magic all its own.

“She could be right,” Doyle suggested, “The occult and all that. Maybe someone’s idea of a joke.”

“Nah, that stuff’s properly old, not something someone knocked up for fun. If it’s black magic then someone was dead serious about it. I dunno though…”

“What?” Doyle stumbled slightly as they stepped across the common, decided it was as good an excuse as any to hold Bodie’s hand again, and tucked them into Bodie’s coat pocket once more. Bodie gave his arm a squeeze as they walked, and Doyle took a deep, satisfied breath. “You dunno what?”

“ _Occulta_ \- I know it sounds like the devil and all his little minions, but I’ve got a feeling it means something else as well, something more… boring.”

“Google when we get home,” Doyle suggested, “There are no mysteries the internet can’t fix…”

Bodie looked at him sceptically, and Doyle felt a bubble of laughter well up inside him. A bit of intrigue, a bit of interest in life, and Bodie warm down his side - what more could he want in life?”

 

**Chapter Seven**

There was no google by the time they got home though - and no telephones either. Their mobiles had always been a bit unreliable around _The Half Moon_ , but the snow had apparently brought every other way of communicating with the outside world to a complete halt as well, ice on the lines, or frozen cables, or something that Burt was vague about. 

“Never really worry about it anyway, mucker,” he said philosophically, “If someone wants us badly enough they’ll come and find us, and if they don’t then they can do without us until it’s all fixed.”

“Simple as that, is it?” Doyle asked, having come to rely on an instant connection wherever he was, trying to ignore Bodie grinning cheerfully at the corner of the bar beside Brooklyn. “I bet you’ve got no idea where your mobile is right now, do you?” he accused, and Bodie shook his head back at him, equally cheerfully. He was comforted slightly when Brooklyn looked shocked.

“Simple as that, mucker!” Burt confirmed, “Come on - have you tried the Scuttlebutt yet? It’ll do you nicely as an aperitif. ”

Beer as aperitif? But Burt was already waving Brooklyn to fill their glasses, so Doyle shrugged and prepared himself to be rolled back to the cottage.

Roland joined them for lunch, so that they were five: Joanna had been given the day off since Burt was cooking, and there was, as Burt had predicted, no one else prepared to stray far from the warmth of their own hearths, not with more snow expected.

“You’ve not met Brooklyn yet, have you?” Burt asked , “Couldn’t run the place without her!”

“Is that right?” Roland retorted, perhaps sounding sharper than he meant, “Pleased to meet you, young lady.” He held out his hand.

To Doyle’s surprise, Brooklyn didn’t smile back, and she glanced unhappily at Roland’s hand before letting her own be taken. “’lo,” was all she said, and then turned quickly to sit at her own place at the table.

“Funny kind of name - _Brooklyn_ ,” Roland continued, as Burt distributed thick slices of roast lamb, and they passed around potatoes and carrots, beans and mint sauce. “Who on earth chose that for you?”

“Mum,” Brooklyn said simply, unwillingly to Doyle’s ears, though he couldn’t blame her. Roland didn’t seem to be the most tactful bloke. “Everyone thinks it’s after Brooklyn Beckham, but it’s not.”

“They shouldn’t think it if they can count,” Burt said, “He’s only a kid! Go on - it’s a good story - you should tell it!”

But Brooklyn glanced at Roland, shook her head, and looked down at her plate. “You can.”

Burt smiled happily at her. “It’s a great story,” he said, “Romantic! Story goes that seeing New York was her mum’s dream - Becky,” Burt explained, “She thought about Manhattan, realised that wouldn’t work, nearly went for Queenie…”

“Bypassed the Bronx, thank goodness,” Bodie suggested, earning himself a look from Burt, but a small, surprising smile from Brooklyn when he caught her eye.

“…and went with Brooklyn.”

“Did she ever get there - your mum?” Doyle asked, but Brooklyn shook her head. “Still got it to look forward to then, hasn’t she,” he added, aware that there was probably more to it than that, conscious of not knowing much about the girl, except that Burt had once told them she looked after her mum. 

Brooklyn smiled wanly. “Maybe,” she said. “I always thought Queelie was a funny name.” She looked up at Burt, “Is that from New Zealand?”

“That’s Tom’s girl, isn’t it?” Bodie asked, adding another roast potato to Doyle’s plate as he filled up his own, as well as another slice of lamb. “You heard Joanna,” he said, helping Brooklyn’s effort to the change the subject, “You’re too skinny. Put some meat on your bones.”

“There’s enough meat on my bones,” he retorted half-heartedly, but willing to go along with him, seeing Roland look at Brooklyn and open his mouth again. “And twice as much on yours. I’m not sure you should be having lunch at all after all that shortbread you put away at Clarry’s.”

“Tom’s wife,” Burt corrected. “You’d think, wouldn’t you, but it’s Irish apparently. Their family went over when she was just a nipper…” 

Talk turned to New Zealand for a while, Roland quizzing Burt enthusiastically, Brooklyn quietly eating her dinner, and Bodie joining in with it all, though Doyle saw him giving Brooklyn worried looks now and then.

“How was Clarry getting on when you saw her?” Burt asked at last, as they slowed down to the last scrapings of gravy and potato. “She’s due in January, it’s not all that far away.”

“Looked good,” Bodie said, “Fecund and all that.” He grinned unrepentantly at Doyle’s exaggerated wince, and Brooklyn looked quickly from one to the other of them, smiled too. “How old’s that house of theirs?” Bodie went on. “You should have seen the things we found…”

“All kinds of nooks and crannies,” Doyle interrupted hurriedly, suddenly irrationally worried that Bodie would mention their scrap of material with its code in front of Roland, “It must be old if it’s got a priest hole, that’s from back in Guy Fawkes days, isn’t it? You’d never think it from the outside, it’s been looked after, hasn’t it…”

He was blathering, and Bodie was looking at him strangely, eyes narrowed in a tiny frown, so Doyle glanced quickly at Roland, then back at Bodie and shook his head slightly. Bodie’s mouth opened in an _oh_ of understanding, but he raised an eyebrow, as if to say _again, Doyle_?

Burt was mopping up the last of his gravy with a final mouthful of lamb and mint sauce, completely oblivious to anything but the question. “They say there’s walls that are medieval, but that’s more his line than mine,” he nodded his head towards Bodie, “All I know is it gets draughty in the summer when they’ve let the Aga go out.”

Doyle looked at Bodie in surprise. “You, a historian?”

“What?” Bodie sniffed in mock offense, “I can’t have more than one string to my bow?”

“Didn’t know you had a bow.”

Bodie mouthed a _ha-ha_ at him, and then leaned back, draining his pint, and turning to ask Roland how he’d liked his lunch, and Doyle watched him, still surprised. He’d always been quite keen around castles and anything that looked like it might have had a cannon once, but the idea of him actually _liking history_ all those years back, when he was out in Africa, and it had been Burt who’d known him best, not Doyle at all… How could he never have known? Alright, he had all those old guns on his wall, carried carefully from flat to flat, and even now sitting propped on the mantelpiece next door, waiting to be found the perfect position, but… they were guns. 

Or were they history?

Bodie must have felt his gaze, because he looked up again, smiled quizzically at him, and then winked - a sure sign he knew he’d got Doyle hooked. Maybe they’d made it up between them, him and Burt, tease the new lad… but he knew they hadn’t.

They sat a little longer over the meal, Roland engaging Bodie in a debate about Northern Ireland, also to Doyle’s surprise. Bodie hedged over what he’d been doing there, but he seemed perfectly happy to argue the ins and outs of this and that clan and who’d been doing what on the Shankhill Road, and Doyle was sure it was more than he’d heard himself about Bodie’s days in Ireland, in all his years in CI5. He was oddly put out by it, sitting having lunch with these men who knew more about Bodie than he did himself - _not true_ , he told himself severely, _not true_ \- and eventually he pushed back his chair and offered to help Burt with the dishes - _not to worry mucker, it’ll take two minutes for Brooklyn and me to put ‘em in the industrial strength dishwasher we’ve got back there - perk of the trade, mucker, perk of the trade!_ \- eyed Bodie until he too rose, and they wandered the few steps back to their own side of the building.

“What’s got into you, Bodie?” he asked, when they were safely inside, “Can’t get two words out of you half the time, and…”

But Bodie just reached out and gave him a rough hug, smeared his cheek with a kiss, and pulled him down to the sofa - _not_ , Doyle realised, to have his wicked way with him, but so he could pull the cloth out of his pocket again and smooth it in front of them over a cushion.

The light was better in their living room, and they could see more clearly the words scattered here and there, scrawled in rough lettering. There was the sign of a compass, with E marked clearly for East, there were eight rough squares, and in one of them, right in the middle, was a cross. 

“Mysteriouser and mysteriouser, said Alice,” Doyle said at last, drawing back slightly.

“You know, I’m pretty sure that’s Latin,” Bodie said, continuing to squint at them, “But I can’t read it properly. Not,” he forestalled Doyle, “That I’d know what they meant if I could read them.”

“Yeah, right,” Doyle retorted - he’d never been convinced that Bodie was as oafish as he’d made out, but he’d never thought he might have been Eton material either. “Does Doctor Foster in there know Latin?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard,” Bodie said absently. “But that’s not to say he doesn’t. I suppose Roland might.”

“No…” Doyle said quickly, so that Bodie looked up at him, both eyebrows raised.

“Are you going to make a habit of this, Raymond?”

“A habit of what? I just think we should wait until we know him a bit better… He could be another DeVonney.”

Bodie looked sceptical. “What - lightening in the same place twice? Mind you, I’m not sure Burt’s keen...” He ignored Doyle’s surprised look, lifted a finger, and drew his attention back to the cloth. “Look - I reckon this says _via occulta_ \- and I reckon that might mean secret way. You know, like the street signs.”

“Street signs? What street signs? _Masons this way, and roll yer trouser leg up before you get to the toll bridge?_ ”

“Berk - in Italy! You know - the Via Appia and all that.”

“Alright, where’s Bodie, and what have you done with him?” 

“Ah, come on Doyle - remember Pompeii?”

_A chateau in the Italian hills and he could dig up the whole garden if he wanted to…_

“Yeah alright, so it means secret way - what about the rest of it then?” He gestured to the map. “ _Cellula_? Don’t tell me it’s more dungeons… and _lichens_? Slippery when wet?”

“Not gonna play if… was that a knock at the door?”

It was - and before they could even get to it, they heard it open, footsteps in their little hallway-cum-vestibule, and then the door to their living room was swinging open, and Roland’s head looked in.

“Hallo!” he said, “I wondered where you’d got to - fancy going for a walk and showing me around? Burt thought you might. Can have a chat about tomorrow if you like, make an informal start.”

Apparently even here they’d better remember to lock their doors - was this countryside friendliness, Doyle wondered, or was Roland just a nosy old bugger? _He_ wasn’t from the country… Bodie, he’d noticed, had rolled up their cloth and was tucking it in his pocket, but Roland had obviously seen something.

“What have you got there?” he asked, “Something interesting?”

“Burt’s right - a walk’s exactly what we need!” he said hurriedly, “Come on you,” he prodded Bodie, “Shift your arse into the fresh air!”

“I’ve already been in the fresh air to-”

“So John - where are you from originally? London yourself?”

Roland looked curiously at him for a moment, but must have decided to let it go, because he shook his head, and turned for the door instead. “I’ll let Burt know you’re coming.”

“He’s not allowed to know about Sam and Clarry either then?” Bodie asked, when he was gone, a smirk of amusement on his face, so that Doyle wanted to knock it off.

“Look, I’ve just got a feeling, alright…”

“We’re supposed to be retired, you know.”

“And that’s another thing - how’re we going to keep in touch with hq if the lines are all down? I wanted to take a look at what Red’s been up to tonight…”

“Well if we can’t then we can’t,” Bodie said implacably. “Besides, she’s probably having herself a merry little Christmas right now, just like the rest of us - _should be_ ,” he added in parenthesis. “Touch of mistletoe - touch of wine…”

“Alright, Cliff Richards,” Doyle could feel himself scowling, but he didn’t like feeling cut off, and he was getting less keen himself on the idea of starting lessons with their brewery tutor tomorrow when they couldn’t check up on Chapman at the same time. _Real work_ , his heart treacherously whispered to him. He brightened suddenly, a thought occurring. “Hey, maybe if we get him close enough we can chuck Roland off one!”

“Off one w…? Oh christ, warn a bloke, would you?” But Bodie was shaking his head, amusedly unamused, and then he was off the sofa and hauling Doyle to his feet as well.

Back in the pub, they found Burt and Brooklyn rugged up, but no sign of Roland. 

“Had to take a phone call,” Burt explained, “Said he’d catch us up.”

“You closing up for the afternoon, then?” Doyle asked, glancing at the empty bar, and Burt nodded, then shook his head. Well that was clear enough.

“We’re not likely to get anyone up here, but if they do I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

“You’ll what…?” Doyle sputtered, all his old, constabulary instincts rising to the fore. “You can’t do that…”

“Course I can, mucker! By the time any thieving bugger had got their van packed and up that hill, we’d be back and staring at them stuck in the ditch, wouldn’t we! If we can’t get in and out, then no one else’ll be able to either.”

“They could ‘ave four wheel drive, be waiting for…”

“What, just this moment?” Bodie cut in. “A freak snow event, coupled with the staff popping out for a breath of fresh air? Besides, the lights are on, the cars are here, and Roland’s still inside.”

“Mmn, there is that,” Burt muttered, so that Doyle looked at him, eyebrows raised. Maybe he had learned some caution after De Vonney. “No, mucker, I’m sure he’s not after the silver either - but I’m not 100 per cent about him - and I’m not convinced he’s the man to teach you about the business - barely knew his _Give You Joy_! from his _Heart of Oak_.”

“I didn’t like him either,” Brooklyn said quietly, but rebelliously. “And he didn’t like me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true…” Doyle began, but she shot him such a disappointed look that he didn’t finish. There’d been a touch of the patronising about Roland’s _young lady_ , and he hadn’t bothered to make any further conversation with her over the table, but all the same - how could anyone not like Brooklyn, who might not be the brightest spark in the kitchen, but wouldn’t say boo to a goose and had a smile that went all the way to her eyes?

“Here, you know we were up at the farm today?” he asked, nudging Bodie and receiving a quick nod in reply, as he’d known he would. They hadn’t talked about it, but Burt deserved to know, and maybe it’d help cheer Brooklyn up. 

Bodie slid the book and the cloth from his pocket and put them on the bar, and Doyle, glancing around the room quickly, moved to the corner that would block them from Roland’s sight if he came upon them suddenly from upstairs. Bodie looked amused, but he didn’t say anything.

“What have you found this time, mucker?” Burt asked, peering at the cloth, smoothing it out with surprisingly gentle fingers. “More mysteries? I told you Clarry’s would be the place, didn’t I!”

“That and half the countryside around here,” Doyle muttered, nodding with an encouraging smile to Brooklyn as she reached out and ran a finger down the leather cover of the book. “Go on, take a look.”

He watched as she turned the pages carefully, began mouthing words to herself as she tried to read the old English. “It’s a cook book!” she said, after a few moments, “A really old cook book!”

“Alice Mary Kirrin’s recipe book, apparently,” Bodie said, “Though Clarry was a bit worried they might be evil recipes.”

Brooklyn looked at him, surprised. “No! This one’s for backache I think - I should try it out for mum - and this one’s for… cough mixture. One pint Jamaica Rum, half a pint sweet oil, half a pound of honey and… ew! A tablespoon of _tar_ … Oh, this one’s nicer - _Apricock pudding_ … take a pint of cream…” she stopped, suddenly aware of all eyes on her. “Sorry…”

“Don’t be sorry, my girl, it’s fascinating!” Burt said gently, “You reckon it means _apricots_?”

Brooklyn skimmed the rest of the page and nodded, then turned it over and read quietly to herself. Burt put an arm around her, and gave her a squeeze, then turned back to the cloth. 

“Not a clue, Bodie old mucker,” he said at last. “I think you’re right about the secret way and the cells, but the rest… It might be directions to the dungeons on Kirrin, you know.”

“Bit late,” Doyle sniffed, ignoring Bodie’s withering look. 

There was a thump of footsteps from the hallway behind the bar, and, as casually as he could, Doyle gathered the book and the cloth to him, and slid them back into his inside pocket.

“You still here?” Roland said in surprise, and then “You’re coming with us?” to Brooklyn.

Brooklyn bristled defiantly, and Burt wrapped an arm around her again. “Experienced staff representative, this!” he said, “Of course she’s coming!”

Roland nodded though, and smiled jovially, looking again like the cheerful sailor-turned-publican that Doyle had first imagined him to be. He walked beside Doyle and Brooklyn when Bodie and Burt paused to eye the ocean, chatting easily enough to them both, including the girl in his conversation, asking about the local history and the families who’d lived in Downsey for centuries.

“Never had those kind of roots myself,” Doyle confessed, caught Brooklyn giving him a sympathetic look and hurried on. “London’s home really…” _Bodie’s home really_ , he thought, feeling Bodie’s hand on his shoulder, as he caught them up, and giving him a smile which he knew Brooklyn was watching too.

They wandered down towards the village, slipping and sliding now and then on patches that had been slicked to ice, confident at least that in the snow-quiet of the afternoon they’d be able to hear cars coming a mile away. The sky was still a lowering grey-white, and now and then a flake fluttered down from some straining cloud, but it was good to be out in the fresh air again, and that was something that made it feel more like home too, somehow. Used to be they’d spent most of their days out of doors - when had that changed? So gradually, so slowly, that he’d barely noticed until it had happened. Sometime around Cowley’s retirement, he supposed, when they’d been in off the streets for good… well, for as good as Cowley had ever been.

He became aware that he’d fallen behind the others, deep in his ruminations, and he watched them walking for a whilst, the three men looking very different. Burt was tucked up in a thick parka that made him look even more portly than he was, Roland wore a black woollen coat that would have been more at home in the city, no matter where he said he was from, and Bodie was wearing his waxed green jacket over his fisherman’s jumper - very _country gentleman_ , thought Doyle, but he liked the way it made Bodie look as if he’d lived here forever, as though these were his people and this was his land, and he was at _home_. Beside them Brooklyn was a pale winter princess, long blonde hair tumbling over a white puffa jacket, light blue jeans, and a pair of knitted boots. She was pretty, sparkling in the cold air, and Doyle wondered despite himself how long she’d stay that way, if she remained in Downsey.

He stretched out, despite the snow, so that he was walking with them again, just in time to hear Roland say “To be honest, your business practice could use some modernisation, there’s a lot of streamlining being done these days, especially around staffing…”

“My staff stays where it is,” Burt said immediately, with a look at Bodie, “Modernising or no modernising!”

“Not sure _modern_ ’s the way we want to go,” Doyle interjected, “Bit old for too many flash ideas ourselves…”

“Well that’s where you don’t need to worry,” Roland said, turning to him, with something of an evangelical air, Doyle thought. “Breweries these days have all kinds of help available to their lease-holders…”

“We’re not lease-holders,” Bodie interrupted, just as he had in the car.

“…and freeholders,” Roland continued smoothly. “From human resource management, to help with improving the premises, redecorating…”

Doyle glanced at Burt, shook his head firmly - they weren’t modernisers, and if they hadn’t liked the place as it was then they wouldn’t have bought it, no matter that Burt was an old and trusted mate of Bodie’s. He half-listened to Roland as they walked, his ideas mostly seemed to centre around _open plan_ , and _plasma tv_ , and the deals that could be made with employment agencies to minimise staff wages. Brooklyn dropped behind them at that, Burt slowing to walk with her, and Doyle didn’t feel he could leave Roland to Bodie, even to reassure her. Burt would know, surely he would - though a glance at his unusually stony face seemed to suggest differently.

Eventually Roland seemed to realise that his audience of two had gone quiet themselves, and he looked back over his shoulder and then changed the subject, loudly and obviously, back to Downsey and the local area itself. They walked a circuit of the village, which looked as picturesque as the tourists could have wanted in the snow, just when there weren’t any, of course. Everything was turned white, snow on the pebbly curve of beach, over the breakwaters and across the string of fishing boats and other vessels in the harbour.

“Should have brought my camera,” Roland said, “Can’t believe there’s no one else out - not even kids!”

“Oh, they’ll be tucked up,” Burt said, clearly making an effort, and too normally good-natured to make it grudgingly, though Brooklyn scuffed the snow beneath her boots. “People are up early around here - by this time of day they’re practically worn out again!”

Doyle looked at him sceptically, and Burt winked. “It’s true - I come down and look at the catch most mornings, and if you’re not here long before seven then you’ve missed it!”

“The boats won’t have been out this morning,” Bodie said, “Will they?”

Burt shrugged. “I’ve seen ‘em go out in worse, but I wouldn’t have thought so. Mind you, I dunno whether the fish like a good snow or not.”

It was too cold to spend long standing staring out to sea, for all it was unusual to see it across a field of snow, and Burt led them up one of the small streets that led into the hills behind Higher Downsey, and back across to the fields and open spaces again. Eventually they were high enough to look across the rolling countryside, patchwork-white with hedges and stone walls, the _Half Moon_ a blur of light just visible against the dimming sky.

“Is that Firrester Farmhouse?” Roland asked suddenly, gesturing towards the farm buildings as it came into sight, their path just about to join the one that took them back across the common and down to the pub again.

“Yes, do you know it?” Burt asked, sounding surprised.

“No, no,” Roland said at once, “I heard of it somewhere, wondered if that was the place. One of the oldest houses here, isn’t it?”

“Bit much to call on Clarry again,” Bodie said, so that Doyle screwed his face up and closed his eyes for a moment in frustration as they walked along. “We were only there this morning.”

“Oh yeah? Is it as big as it looks?”

Doyle held his breath, and Bodie must have realised what he’d done, because he glanced sideways, one eyebrow raised. Well, it couldn’t hurt to admit they were friends with Sam and Clarry, could it? “Fairly big, I suppose,” he said at last, “That’s where Sam lives, who picked you up from the station this morning, you know.”

“Ah, I didn’t realise - had no idea he had that kind of property!”

That’s right - _the odd job man_ , Roland had thought him. In this day and age? 

“Family of six live there,” Burt said, “Well five and a half until next month, and room enough for them to take in bed and breakfasters on the side.”

“Couple of artists up there over Christmas,” Bodie said to Burt, “Doyle’s going to go and ask for lessons.”

“Oh yeah? Is he any good?”

“Not bad actually,” Bodie said loyally, and Doyle let it warm him through.

“They won’t like being bothered over Christmas though, will they?” Roland asked, “Besides - you’ll be busy with lessons!”

The remark made Doyle feel obstinate. He’d only half-formed an idea of going over to meet the artists, but he made up his mind then that he _would_ go and talk to them if he had the chance.

They turned their back on the farmhouse where the paths met, and trod the same route they had that morning, their footsteps still perfectly clear in the late afternoon light, just two pairs of them, walking side by side, but Doyle looked back over his shoulder to the farmhouse, feeling strangely protective of it, and he only joined in the chat again when Bodie fell back to walk beside him once more. 

 

**Chapter Eight**

Doyle’s gloom hadn’t lifted when he woke on Monday morning, long before any alarm they’d set themselves - _it’s wrong to set an alarm when you’re retired! Bodie had claimed_ \- and again with Bodie still snuffling quietly beside him. He’d dreamed of their strange piece of cloth last night, of the words fading even as Bodie tried to read them, until it turned out that he was stuck at the back of the cupboard, waiting desperately for Bodie to work out the secret and get him out…

It had been years since he’d felt like this - the dread of school that morning, he recognised, of being under someone else’s thumb.

Well, it had been years since he _had been_ under someone else’s thumb, he supposed - except maybe Bodie’s…

As if he’d heard him fretting in his sleep, Bodie reached out a sleepy arm, inveigling it under Doyle’s neck, and pulling him over to lie more closely, breathing warm, heavy breath into his ear until Doyle wriggled irritably, turned his cheek slightly to itch his nose against Bodie’s face in lazy protest. Bodie let him, then tilted his face down and kissed him, a warm, early-morning kiss that banished Doyle’s mood for the length of it, that reminded him that there was still no one he had to answer to except Bodie, that Bodie’s thumb was a good thing to be under - as was having his cock wrapped in Bodie’s solid, warm hand, and pulled close against Bodie’s stomach, his belly, his own grown prick, so that they could press and rub their way to just the kind of morning it should be every…

Doyle woke to the alarm clock beeping gently at him, to Bodie’s breath warm and ticklish in his ear, and to his first school day in years.

They’d decided to hold their lessons in the pub rather than their own cottage, the better to keep the two places separate to some extent - _difficult enough to do, muckers_ , Burt had told them, and any number of work colleagues since the summer, those who’d retired to their own pubs and those who’d moved into tenancies instead, invalided from the squad and not fancying security work. _Get yourselves a good manager and live far away_ … But Burt had been his own manager, and they weren’t in this for the peaceful life, it was a challenge they wanted.

In the end they’d set up what Burt called his spare room as a kind of learning environment - he’d pulled out a large circular table - _the round table_ , Bodie’d grinned - and found them a couple of chairs, cleared various pieces of redundant furniture from one wall to make enough space for a projection screen, and swore he’d dusted it all himself. There was a shelf half-full of old how-to-run-a-pub type books, which Roland had glanced at and dismissed with a sniff, a skylight, far far above them, shadowed over with the latest fall of snow, so that it shed a strange glow upon them until the lights were turned on, and sweeping views across the expanse of the beer garden, through huge windows that had once been doors, until every key for them had been lost.

Roland had folders for them both - big black things, full of alphabetised dividers and pages and pages of typed notes. _Accounts, Licence-holding, Your Responsibilities, You and the Law…_ “You won’t need to worry about that one, will you?” Roland joked, in that way course presenters had of making jokes that weren’t funny. What did he mean by it, anyway, Doyle wondered - he didn’t know their background any more than Brooklyn or Clarry did - they were civil servants, they’d worked in London - or did he just mean Bodie’s army background, nothing sinister? Was Doyle seeing spies everywhere, even here in the country? He was supposed to be getting away from all that. He sniffed, sighed, flicked through a raft of pages labelled _Inventory Control_ , and waited for Roland to get on with it.

“Now, you’ve both done your PEAT, even though you’ve come in from a different direction, and you’ve got through your basic accreditation,” Roland began, and they were away - wandering through a half-new world of licencing regulations, human resourcing and marketing suggestions. Doyle surprised himself by not minding the idea of paperwork and procedures on the job - some of it wasn’t all that far from being the duty officer of the local nick all those years ago. Record this here, keep a close eye on that there… But it still made his eyes water when Roland ventured into the idea of recruitment and retention, national insurance and tax inspections - even tying their menus into the local seasonal round.

Bodie was unsurprisingly keen to work on familiarising himself with the competition, and refused to worry about tiny little matters such as COSHH or RIDOR.

“You’re just grumpy you didn’t get to shag me this morning,” he said, sotto voce when Roland left them to get on with some reading whilst he made mid-morning coffee, so that Doyle coughed in surprise, and Bodie sat back grinning. 

“If you don’t take this seriously, we’ll go under,” he growled, but Bodie just winked at him. 

The morning stretched on, so that Doyle couldn’t remember a longer three hours, even on stakeout back when they’d started their relationship, and he’d spent entire stretches of observation fantasising about what he was going to do to Bodie when he’d finally got his trousers off… Now what he mostly liked, he thought gloomily, were the nights when Bodie would make hot chocolate for them both… Though there was that thing he’d done with the marshmallows once, when they were all melted, and he…

Roland yelped suddenly - there was no other way to describe it, Doyle thought in amusement, jerked back to reality, and he looked over at Bodie. What had he been up to? But Bodie wasn’t laughing to himself, he was actually blushing, and wriggling around on his chair… Doyle looked down just in time to see him finally getting his shoe back on properly, and swallowed suddenly as he realised what must have happened. Roland was looking from one to the other of them.

“Are you…?” he began hesitantly, frowning.

“Sorry - thought you were Ray,” Bodie said, sealing it for both of them. They’d not told Roland - hadn’t thought they’d have to. Surely it should have been clear enough from the fact that they were living together in a cottage next to the pub…

“You mean you’re…?”

They both stared at him, and he swallowed.

“…a couple?”

“Problem?” Bodie asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No - of course not. Didn’t realise, that’s all… _thought I was Ray_ …” 

It sounded suddenly silly, spoken out loud like that by Roland, as if he was mocking them rather than amused by what had happened, as if they were a silly pair of poofs playing games under the table, and Doyle opened his mouth to say something, caught sight of Bodie’s tiny shake of the head, and subsided. Didn’t matter, he told himself, you’ve heard worse, and from bigger men than Roland.

Outside in the hallway, Burt’s grandfather clock struck twelve - _hickory, dickory, dock_ , Bodie hummed, unrepentantly - and Roland glanced at his watch. “We’ve made a start, gentlemen, and if you could have a look at the rest of that section before tomorrow morning, then we should be able to move forward at a pace.”

Doyle was instantly determined to look not just at the rest of the section, but to memorise the rest of the folder as quickly as he could - anything to get it all over with as soon as they could. For now he hefted the papers to the right side of the ring binder and closed it with a snap. In the distance he could hear Burt, probably talking to Brooklyn, and there was a smell of something spicy seeping through the building - lunch, he thought more cheerfully, better than the work canteen, a definite advantage of retirement.

He caught Bodie’s eye, and they let Roland stride away, presumably to his room upstairs in the pub to get ready for his afternoon over at Weymouth.

“Fuckin’ ‘ell,” Doyle said, “I ‘ope it’s not going to be like this every day.”

“Nah,” Bodie said, with surely more confidence than he had reason for, “He was checking up on us today, making sure we’d not paid some poor sod to take the tests for us. You heard him - it’s all about _maximising our output_ tomorrow.”

“Can’t we just run a pub?” Doyle wondered, “Bit more beer, bit less bureaucracy?”

“That’s supposed to be my line, Raymond - your knickers are in a knot, aren’t they?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? It’s a lot to take on you know, all…” he gestured to the folders, then widened his sweep to take in the whole room, and pub - the entirety of Dorset. “If we fuck up…”

“Yeah, but we’re not going to fuck up, are we?” 

Bodie could sound so reasonable when he wanted, Doyle thought, pushing his chair back so that it scraped over the uncarpeted floor. He eyed his folder malevolently, looked up to find Bodie staring at him again, that clear stare that he didn’t always understand.

“Come for a walk,” Bodie said suddenly, so that Doyle did an exaggerated double-take at him.

“What, before lunch? Before a pint, even?”

“Even before that,” Bodie insisted, and, grabbing his sleeve, pulled him out into the heart of the pub, past the bar where Brooklyn was presiding over what looked like half a dozen of the local lads, and into the cold, snowy world.

They’d neither of them brought their coats for the few steps between their cottage and the main bar, and the cold struck them almost as hard as some petty villain might have, a shiver running through Doyle even as he breathed in the freshness of it.

They didn’t walk far in the end - through to their own garden, and around the side - far enough to eye the five, snow-coated steps leading up towards the fields and the public right of way, and to remember with a glance at each other that they were neither of them as thick-skinned as they’d once been.

So instead, Bodie pulled Doyle towards him, still there in the snow, so that Doyle felt the warmth of his arms through the shirt and jumper he was wearing, so that he nuzzled in to Bodie’s neck, to the faint smell of aftershave still there, to the cold-warmth of his skin, and wrapped him even closer in his own arms.

“You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” Bodie asked, whispering in his ear, so that the whole world seemed hushed with the falling snow. Doyle thought, wondered. Surely not sex in the snow, even the young lads would have a difficult time of it in this cold…

“What have you always wanted to do?” he whispered back, enjoying the moment, the anticipation of one of Bodie’s jokes.

“I’ve always wanted…” Bodie kissed him on the ear, “…since I was a lad…” He kissed his cheek. “…to…” He lifted his head, let their lips brush just slightly, then pulled back and grinned. “To build a snowman.”

Doyle looked skywards for a moment, and regretted it when a snowflake caught his eye. Blinking, he ignored Bodie’s broad grin. “You’ve never built a snowman?”

“Never been any snow where I lived - and by the time there was I’d jumped ship for Africa. Not much snow there, either.”

“Right, my son,” Doyle began, rubbing his hands together, “Well the first thing you’ve got to do…”

To his surprise, Bodie actually followed his instructions, shoving together snow to make a massive body, and then patting it firmly into place. With a grin, Doyle set him to packing together a second huge snowball to top the first, and nipped inside to see whether there was actually any veg in their great refrigerator.

When it was finished, their snowman - snow _person_ , Bodie insisted, _hadn’t he been listening that morning_? - was a thing of beauty. Mostly round, in legs and belly and head, with an actual carrot for a nose, and brussel sprouts for eyes, its smile might have scared Coogan and Frankie J themselves, being made from a pair of plastic teeth that Bodie’d had in his leaving-do Christmas cracker. Best of all it had warmed them up enough that they could spend another minute or two huddled together in the snow, Doyle’s face tilted to the sky so he could feel the flakes landing on him, so that he could feel Bodie licking them off, one by one…

 

**Chapter Nine**

They trooped back into the bar, coats in hand this time, slightly damp around the edges, but glowing, and Brooklyn smiled at them as she pulled a couple of pints of Rogue Wave, their heads frothing just like the real thing. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said, “The snow?”

“Great,” Bodie said enthusiastically, “Made me first snowman!”

“We had a competition last year, all the kids in the village came up and made snowmen in the beer garden - I stayed over one night when the weather was really bad, and they scared the life out of me when I woke up next morning. They were really good!”

“D’you do a lot of things like that?” Doyle asked, “Local stuff with the pub?”

“Yeah, we try to - Burt says he’s no good with ideas, so I come up with them, and he makes them work. We had a winter murder mystery night last year, and got the local history society in for a week, and…” she paused, looked at them from under her lashes and then rushed on, “…and I keep thinking that we could make that room - the one you’re having your lessons in - into a sort of community room, and maybe have a reading group or something, and invite other local groups to use it for free, because then they’d come and buy drinks too… I was going to ask Burt, but then he said he was leaving…”

“I like it,” Doyle said quickly, “You reckon there’d be enough takers round here for a reading group, things like that?” He took a mouthful of his pint, licking the foam from his lips, and watched her carefully. It was probably more than she’d ever said to them before, and he wanted her to feel comfortable with them, didn’t want her to go off when Burt did, or worry that they were going to let Roland push her out in favour of _agency_ staff - probably a euphemism, he’d decided, for _cheaper workers from East Europe_.

“Well, a few of my friends fancied a reading group - Zanna suggested it actually, but I thought it sounded good fun, only none of us have got much space or quiet at home… and then Clarry said she’d come if we did it, and Alice from the shop, and I bet we could get other people…”

“We’ll have a chat with Burt about getting it running before he leaves,” Doyle said, glancing quickly at Bodie, who gave him an agreeable nod. “Have a think about any other ideas you’ve had too - we could use a bit of local knowledge when it comes to things like that.”

Brooklyn nodded enthusiastically, smiling, and slid her hands into her back pockets. “I can write them down for you, if you like - I like thinking of ideas like that!”

The door rattled behind them, the same few lads who’d been tobogganing the day before, and they got their lunch order in - chicken korma and naan bread - before they lost Brooklyn to the pumps again. Bodie beamed at her as they took their pints and claimed a table by the window, and she was still smiling when she turned away.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Doyle said, as they slid into the bench together, “You still got that book you nicked from Clarry?”

“What?” Bodie reached into the pocket of his coat, folded in half and draped on the bench beside him. “This one?”

“Watch it! That’s probably an antique, that is!”

Bodie raised his eyebrows at him. “It’s _definitely_ an antique - someone’s heirloom, even.”

That was true - it presumably belonged to Burt really. Still - nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all that.

“You remember Burt said Brooklyn fancied doing a catering course, but didn’t want to leave her mum? And you remember she seemed pretty into it yesterday?”

“You think an ancient book of recipes for turtle soup might be some compensation?”

“Turtle soup - really?” he asked, distracted. 

“Page thirty six,” Bodie said, then shook his head, grinning. “What about Brooklyn?”

“Well I was thinking - if she doesn’t want to get out of town for a bit, why not see how she does on the management side of things?”

“Doyle - she’s barely twenty years old…”

“I don’t mean _as manager_ , you berk, but - what about letting her sit in with us, see how far she gets?”

“What - with Roland?”

“Yes _with Roland_!” God Bodie could be thick sometimes. “If she fancies the catering side of things, she’ll probably need to know about the ‘elf and safety muck, and human resources and all, won’t she?”

“Yes,” Bodie agreed, as if he was suggesting they try to take over the Dorset mafia, or invade France. “I’m not sure Roland’ll go for it though.”

Bodie was as dubious about the atmosphere between them all as he was then. “Sod Roland. Look, it might give her a bit of a boost, mightn’t it, for when she does get out.”

“Are you on the good deeds already, Doyle?” Bodie asked, but he was half-smiling. “Couldn’t hurt, I suppose. You reckon she’d want the book?”

“Burt said she was into the food thing - maybe she could turn it into some _olde tyme winter feest_ ,” he suggested, careful to pronounce as much in ye olde Englishe as he could.

“Sounds good to me,” Bodie said with a grin. “You aiming for the top of the class again, professor? Maybe Roland will approve after all…”

But Bodie had been right the first time, Roland did not, in fact, approve at all. He came into the bar when they were halfway through their lunch, and they could hardly turn him away when he came to sit with them, Joanna putting a curry-filled plate down in front of him, knife and fork wrapped neatly in a Christmas-red-and-green napkin.

“The barmaid?” he asked, pausing in between scooping a piece of chicken onto his fork, and putting it in his mouth. “I don’t think that’s likely to be a good idea, do you?”

“Why not?” Doyle asked, bristling, “Burt rates her.” 

“Well, local girl like her - doesn’t suggest you’ll get much pay-off for your investment,” Roland declared, apparently oblivious to Doyle’s increasingly outraged expression. Bloody _Daily Mail_ reader…

“If Burt vouches for her background that’s good enough for me,” he said, heatedly, “And you’re here anyway - it’s not as if you’re losing money just having her there!”

“There’s the distraction from your own work,” Roland explained calmly, “You can hardly expect her to be able to follow the kind of material that’s suitable for men at your level.”

“She probably knows more than we do - she’s been here…”

“Since she was eighteen years old,” Roland interrupted, “I know. But what other jobs are there for a local girl like her?”

“Well this’ll help see that she’s got the chance for something better!”

“Money down the drain,” Roland said calmly, “She’ll be pregnant to one of those lads before you know it, and back here part time for the rest of her life. I’ve seen it before.”

“So it must be true every time, must it?” Short-sighted, compassionless, jumped-up prat of a man. “What about giving her a break then, helping her along to something better?”

“It’ll never happen…”

“Well I say it will,” Doyle determined stubbornly, “She’s sitting in with us whenever Burt can spare her.”

“Look…”

Doyle glared angrily at the man, cutting him off before he could repeat one of his accusations. She might not have had the best start in life - he’d half to ask Burt about that later - but there wasn’t any reason she couldn’t get as far as ahead as she was able. Look at some of the lads from his club, all those years ago - he still heard from a few of them, cards at Christmas, stories about their own sons at university now, or running their own businesses. Roland would have had them all behind bars before they were twenty, left to him…

“I don’t see a problem,” Bodie said smoothly, “If it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out, in the meantime, we’ll give her a go - if she wants it.”

“I’d be surprised if she does,” Roland replied, “But if you have to ask her, go ahead. Right, I’m off - see you two later.”

Doyle felt Bodie’s hand close over his on the bench between them - not worth the aggro - and he clamped his mouth shut on what he wanted to say next, settled for giving his plate one last vicious wipe with the remains of his naan, wishing he could have been wiping the floor with Roland. He gave into it - he just _did not_ like the man!

They spent the afternoon with Burt, checking over inventory and hearing about what experiments had worked for him, which ones had gone disastrously wrong. Several of the latter seemed to be the result of flagrantly ignoring one rule or the other - late night lock-ins prime amongst them. Doyle could see Bodie looking wistfully at him as they listened to Burt’s tales of their old village bobby trying to catch them out again and again, of drinkers sliding out of this door and that window, a fine old _Half Moon_ tradition going back to smuggling days, so Burt claimed. 

“Can you imagine the headlines?” he said cheerfully to Bodie later, when they’d got back to their cottage, “ _Ex-CI5 Heads Locked Up Over Lock-In_ …”

Bodie looked gloomy. “Not as much fun now we can just get the licence extended to cover it anyway,” he agreed. “We’ll have to think of something else to liven things up around here. Mind you, you’re trying your best with Roland - you’re convinced he’s a wrong’un, aren’t you!”

“Smell ‘em…”

“…a mile off - I know!” He plonked himself down on their sofa, facing the fireplace, with the snowy outdoors carefully curtained away, picked up his laptop and leaned back, feet stretched happily over the coffee table towards the warm flames. “Let’s see what our Russian wrong’un’s up to, eh?”

The connection was back, and they spent a few hours shuffling through reports submitted by various CI5 contacts, tracking her from one activity to the next, looking for patterns that no one else had seen, and eventually closed the files in frustration, giving up on everything for the night.

“Hot chocolate?” Bodie asked, getting up at last, and putting another log on the fire.

Doyle watched the sparks shooting up the chimney, remembered what he’d been thinking that afternoon, and nodded, grinning. “If you put something interesting in it.” He didn’t care whether it was marshmallows or brandy, there was promise in either of them.

“You’ve got that look in your eye, Raymund,” Bodie said, looking pleased, coming back to stand in front of him. “Just you remember I’ll be bringing your slippers and pipe at the same time…”

“Thought I’d use your pipe,” Doyle said, eyeing the soft bulge of Bodie’s cords, close enough that he could reach out to it, rub his face across it, perhaps, see if he could still undo the button on Bodie’s trousers with his teeth, slide the zip down, pull his pants to one side, all whilst he held on to Bodie’s muscled arse, letting his fingers play…

“Just you ‘ave your hot chocolate first,” Bodie admonished him, “Then we’ll see about going to bed, where it’s warm, and soft... bit like a marshmallow.”

Doyle found himself swallowing, and his gaze followed Bodie hazily from the room.

 

**Chapter Ten**

Brooklyn did indeed sit in with their lesson the next morning - a whirlwind tour of health and safety compliance and reporting - pleased and perhaps reassured to have been asked. They wouldn’t fire someone they’d offered to train after all - or at least that was what Doyle hoped she’d be thinking. She was quiet, listening and scribbling notes in rounded handwriting, but she didn’t ask any questions, and she seemed so strangely antagonistic to Roland that Doyle wondered whether she ever would. He didn’t blame her - he wouldn’t have spoken to the man unless he had to, either… She slipped away as soon as Roland closed his files though, and by the time they emerged themselves, escaping for an afternoon’s Christmas shopping, she was safely ensconced behind the bar again, taking orders from a pair of bemused medical reps who’d taken a wrong turning somewhere.

The cottage was already coming to feel more like home, Doyle thought, throwing together a plate of sandwiches for lunch, and almost tripping over a pair of Bodie’s shoes on the way through to the living room with them.

“Mind yourself,” Bodie said, grabbing him by the arm and pinching a cheese-and-pickle at the same time, so that Doyle frowned at him, putting them down pointedly on the table and going back to fetch the tea. The teabags lived _there_ , the milk sat _there_ , and if he paused for a moment by the sink he could watch dozens of tiny songbirds flittering back and forth between the various winter-bare bushes and plants in Burt’s kitchen garden.

When he came back through, Bodie had their piece of cloth out again, was trying to copy out the lettering, perhaps in the hope that it would make more sense. 

“All I can get is _via occulta, panes lignens, solum lapideum_ and _cellula_ ,” he said. “And the bloody connection’s down again!”

“Never mind solar leopards and…bread!”

“Eh?”

“Isn’t _pain_ ‘bread’ in French?”

“What’s bread got to do with hidden compartments and smuggling?”

“Smuggling?”

“Well, it’s gotta be, doesn’t it? This place used to be full of smugglers - bet it’s where they hid the brandy they brought up from the dungeons on the island - hey, maybe there’s a tunnel that comes out on the island!”

“All that way, and under the sea as well?” Doyle wondered out loud, and Bodie looked scornfully at him.

“Sea caves and passages, aren’t they - you remember last summer!”

Doyle did remember last summer, remembered being scared he’d never find Bodie alive again, that the sea would rush in and claim them even if he did, that they’d end up lost in the maze of passages that were down there. “Well you can keep that lot for next summer an’ all - it’s cold enough up here right now, never mind messing about in caves.”

“No sense of adventure, you,” Bodie said, with a sad shake of his head. “Alright then - what you getting me for Christmas?”

“Nothing - you’re a grown man, if you want something buy it yourself!”

No doubt happy in the sure knowledge that Doyle had never yet failed to buy him a Christmas present since they first began exchanging joking pictures of George Cowley and plastic Uzis over thirty years ago, Bodie took another sandwich and leaned back in his chair, still eyeing the cloth.

“Still want to give the book to Brooklyn?”

“Yeah, why not - she did alright this morning, didn’t she? Christmas present?”

Bodie looked sceptical. “Funny sort of Christmas present for a girl. Better get her some of that sparkly face stuff girls like, too.”

Doyle glanced at him, found himself smiling softly. For all he was still the hardest man Doyle knew, it was also Bodie who invariably made sure they’d sent Christmas letters to everyone who needed them, that the agents all had some kind of present in their corporate Christmas cards, and that Betty and Allen and McCabe and the rest of those invalided out knew they weren’t forgotten.

“Got Burt that book about New Zealand - get him a decent cognac as well… Joanna?”

“How should I know? We only met the woman a couple of days ago!”

“Yeah, but… alright, something from Marks, then.”

“Is there one in Lyme Regis?”

“Bound to be - posh down there, innit?” Bodie said in a half-hearted idiot’s voice, concentrating on his thoughts. “What about Roland?”

“Roland? Why on earth d’you want to give that pillock a present?”

“Doyle! He’s come all this way to fit us into his schedule - over Christmas as well!”

“He ‘asn’t, he’s doing that other pub in the afternoons, isn’t he - double bubble!”

“That’s not double-bubble, that’s just a full-time job,” Bodie argued. “Come on Ray, not like you to be mean…”

“I’m not being _mean_ , I just…” _There was just… something about the bloke and unless he lightens up on Brooklyn I don’t want to give him anything more than I have to_ did sound a bit tight, he supposed. And it was Christmas, and he was presumably be away from whatever family he’d normally be with - bit weird that, come to think of it - and... “Oh, do what you want!”

“Right - can’t be booze, better get him… a flash pen or something. Reps always like that kind of thing.”

“He’s not a rep,” Doyle muttered rebelliously, but he let it slide. “Alright, come on then Midas, let’s see what the roads are like…”

The roads were much better than they had been over the weekend, even the one up from Higher Downsey to the A35 had been ploughed and gritted - the ploughing a joint effort by Sam and some of the other local farmers, Burt told them, when they popped in to see if there was anything he needed.

Lyme Regis - a change from Bridport, they’d decided - was quiet enough when they arrived that they were able to park on the main drag and walk down past the bits and bobs of shops to the seafront. There was no Marks and Spencer’s, but they found everything they wanted in the various gift shops lining the road, and by the time they’d reached the sea, Doyle was feeling shopped-out but satisfied. He’d need to get rid of Bodie though - there were dozens of shops selling fossil-hunting kits, and he could just imagine Bodie happily chipping away at the rocks down on the seaside.

“Weird, innit,” Bodie said, nudging him to look towards the sea. A layer of snow was still scattered on the beach above the high tide line, and even some of the rocks still wore tiny white caps. “Didn’t know you got snow on the seaside.”

“Course you did - dozens of pictures of it online.”

“Well yeah, but I thought it was supposed to be unusual.”

“It is… You won’t see this every day, you know.”

“Unless I go online.”

Doyle turned to glare at him, caught the glint in his eyes, and rolled his own instead. “I might go for a walk actually - fancy it?”

“Not on your life,” Bodie said cheerfully. “Tell you what, I’ll take this lot up to the car and dump it, meet you in that café there.” He reached out and turned Doyle in the right direction, tilted his chin upwards, and Doyle found himself staring at a building up above them.

“How d’you know that’s a café?” he asked, squinting at it. “Could be someone’s house.”

“I googled it of course - you know Doyle you really should keep up with communications technology…”

“ _You_ …” But Bodie was away, their purchases swinging from either arm as he shrugged happily in Doyle’s direction, walking backwards up the hill for a moment and only narrowly avoiding a woman with two children and a pram who swerved around him. Doyle mock-covered his eyes, watched him turn back to apologise, and when Bodie was out of sight around the corner, headed quickly for the fossil shop he’d spotted on the other side of the road.

It took longer than he expected to choose the right little hammer and chisel and safety goggles, and he smirked when the shop assistant offered him a _holster_ for his tools, and nodded. Bodie’d love it, he thought - toys for the seaside _and_ a holster… He chose a couple of books about fossil-collecting too, including one about some woman who’d been a famous local palaeontologist - _Bodie the historian_ , he thought again, still wondering - and chatted amiably with the young girl about which spots to try first, which ones were most likely to fall down on them if they weren’t careful, and the best places to eat in Lyme. He’d take Bodie somewhere decent, he decided, they’d have themselves a night of it.

Trouble was, how to get this lot back to the car… He emerged from the dim shop blinking, the sky still a winter-sharp blue, as if to make up for not being seen over the weekend, cast about carefully in case Bodie was already back and loitering. There was no sign of him - but the Merc was parked just across the way, in the harbour carpark, so he strode over confidently, opened the boot and tucked the lot into the spare wheel under the floor, shifting their earlier purchases around to get at it.

There - job done.

Bodie wasn’t yet at the café when he strode towards it - a comfortable looking place with big bay windows overlooking the heaving blue sea - so he decided to make good his word and take a quick stroll towards the Cobb, so he could say in all truth that he’d done it. Something pulled at him, though, as he began to turn again towards the seaside, and from the corner of his eye he spotted a bookshop, just across the road. 

Sure enough, the bell rang when he pushed the door open, and the man standing in the corner, peering down at a huge, black-bound book, looked up - Bodie.

“Wondered where you’d got to,” he said, rather unfairly, Doyle thought - he wasn’t the one tucked away in some dusty bookshop. “Come an’ ‘ave a look at this.”

The huge book turned out to be a dictionary - a Latin-English dictionary, and Bodie was pointing triumphantly to the translations he’d written beside his earlier scribbled notes. 

“Look - _cellula_ , compartment, like the hidden cupboard! And _via occulta_ is secret way, and then a stony wall and a wooden panel - it’s directions!”

“Oh my gawd - not another treasure map…”

Bodie looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “Nothing wrong with a good treasure map, old man - but no, this isn’t a treasure map. Well, I don’t suppose it is. But it’s directions to a secret passage in the Firrester place - come on, you can’t tell me you’re not interested!”

Well… of course he was interested, of course he wanted to go wandering around the place tapping at panels, but…

“It’s not our house mate - it’s Sam and Clarry who should go knocking.”

“Ah, they won’t mind - we’ll ask them.”

“Well I didn’t think we were going to sneak in at midnight whilst they were asleep… what are you doing with that?”

Bodie looked at him, surprised. “I’m going to buy it - never know when a Latin dictionary’ll come in handy.”

“When have you ever needed a Latin dictionary?” he asked, only half-joking. 

“Yesterday and the day before. Learn all kinds of new things in the country, don’t you?” Bodie grinned at him, took the weighty plastic bag from the bookseller, and led him back out into the fresh - if dimming - air again and over to the car. He slung the book haphazardly onto the driver’s seat, and slammed the door again. “Tell you what - how about showing me this sea walk of yours?”

So they wandered along the sea front, staying on the tarmacced path well above the snowy shore, like good tourists should, slipping occasionally, nevertheless, until Doyle surreptitiously took hold of Bodie’s arm, lest one of them go over.

“You might have warned me,” Bodie complained, “Bit deadly up here, isn’t it?” But when Doyle looked at him, there was a knowing tease in his eye, and he half-smiled back.

“Yeah alright,” he said, “Busted. I got distracted, and then there you were lurking in bookshops...”

“I wasn’t lurking,” Bodie said indignantly, “I was doing research, I was…”

The bickered happily back and forth, then fell into silence as the sun set over the sea, washing the late afternoon a pale pink that reflected on the snow all around them, a kind of seaside alpenglow. Bodie was a warm presence down his side, and Doyle felt pleasantly mellow and ready for a good meal by the time they got back to the carpark. 

“Right, get yourself in,” he ordered, using his own key to unlock the driver’s door, beating Bodie to the punch, and dropping the bag with his dictionary onto the back seat. 

“I do like it when you’re masterful…” Bodie fluttered his eyelashes at him, obediently walked around to the passenger side. “Where are we off to, Butch?”

Doyle sniffed, disdained to answer, and drove them carefully up the hill out of Lyme, and along the roads of Dorset. Bodie caught the mood, and found them something to suit from the car’s cd selection… Nick Drake, low and mellifluous… They _Pink Mooned_ through the evening, night flashing past as other people’s headlights, everyone going home after another Tuesday that wasn’t quite close enough to the holidays yet…

A turn here, a turn there, and there was _The Soldier’s Mate_ on the corner, just where he’d been promised, a white-painted pub with a slate-tiled roof still rippled with snow along its ridge, windows glowing, and tastefully scattered white fairy lights on either side of the door. 

“Competition, is it?” Bodie asked, when they stopped, Doyle gave him a look and tapped the side of his nose.

“Thought we should see how the other ‘alf live,” he said, “Since you’re almost looking presentable.”

“Me?” Bodie spluttered, then looked more thoughtful. “You know I thought you were looking a bit posh today yourself - how long’ve you had this planned, then?”

Doyle glanced down at himself - pair of brown moleskins, green moleskin shirt that went with ‘em, jumper and jacket over the lot… he supposed he was a bit more coordinated than usual… “Get your bones inside before I change my mind and find a Little Chef” he said roughly, then belied it with a smile. He might be old, he might be grey, but Bodie apparently still paid attention… “If you’re very good you can ‘ave a starter, too.”

 _The Soldier’s Mate_ was everything the girl in the fossil shop had promised - upmarket without being _too_ obvious about it, and full of tables tucked into nooks and crannies rather than in one vast space. He’d reserved one, as directed, at the back of the building, by a window that looked out over the river - lit by moonlight at this time of night, and by more carefully placed fairy lights in trees.

“Why, you little romantic, you,” Bodie said when their waiter had left them to pore over the menus, “What’s the catch, then - what’ve you done?”

“No catch…” He tried to decide whether to be offended, didn’t quite have the inclination to pull it off with Bodie looking at him from under his eyelashes like that. “I haven’t done anything! Just thought we should ‘ave a treat after being good in school all day…”

“I’ll go along with that,” Bodie grinned, and winked at him.

“…and because I know I’ve been a miserable twat for the last couple of months, so sorry,” he added in a rush, not really knowing he was going to say it until it was out. But it was true, he had, and he knew it, and now he’d said it.

“Ah Ray,” Bodie began softly, and Doyle felt a be-socked foot stroke its way up his leg, “You’re always a miserable twat - but you’ll do for me.”

Doyle caught his foot just as it reached a crucial area, and held it tightly in his hands. “You’ll get us thrown out if you’re not careful - we’ve not even ordered yet!”

“I already know what I’m having,” Bodie grinned, and wiggled his toes suggestively in Doyle’s grip. 

From the corner of his eye Doyle saw the waiter begin to make a slow approach, squeezed Bodie’s foot, and let it go, so that by the time the man reached them, they were almost respectable again. 

“Can I get you something to drink, gentlemen?”

Doyle nodded at Bodie to choose, leaning back in his chair and glancing properly at the menu. _Lightly spiced butternut squash soup with vanilla pumpkin seeds, he read, wild mushroom risotto…_

They chose their food, gazed at the river outside, tried the wine when it arrived, and settled back lazily to await their starters. Other couples drifted slowly in, were almost as quickly hidden in their own corners, and the restaurant hummed around them, so that Doyle took a deep, satisfied breath. If retirement was going to include more of this, then maybe he could live with it…

“Hey, listen to this, then!” Bodie had held onto his menu, and had been flicking idly through it, he stabbed a finger at the last page. “ _The soldier’s name was Peter Ferrar, and having fought for the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, he was travelling home to see his family for the first time in seven years when he was set upon by ruffians. In this very building there lived at the time an unmarried farmer, who heard a disturbance on the road and rushed outside to find out what was happening. Seeing that the soldier was fighting for his life, he set to to help him, and before long the pair had run the villains off. But the soldier was on his last legs, both from wounds received heroically in Belgium and from his long journey home, so the farmer took him in and looked after him until he had recovered. In the meantime, the ruffians returned and attacked the farmer’s cattle and burned down his crops in revenge. Peter Ferrar sold the medals that he had received in many a brave battle so that they could turn the farmhouse into a public house instead, and so was our pub founded, the two men remaining together over the years and running a successful business until they died, one after the other, of old age…_ What d’you reckon, then?” He grinned across the table, eyes a deep blue in the light from the candles that flickered between them. “Did you know about that?”

“I did not,” Doyle said, “You sure you’re not making that up?”

Bodie raised an eyebrow at him. “Even I’m not that good, mate - it’s all here, look!” He held out the menu for Doyle to see. “There’s even a picture… oh,” he looked suddenly disappointed, “ _Drawn to illustrate a version of the story told 100 years later_ … You reckon they were at it, then?”

“Bodie!”

“What? That’s the angle isn’t it - gotta be! Who runs this place, anyway? Oh… ” More disappointment, “Sylvie and Patrick Partridge… Well maybe they’re the great-great-great-great grand…”

Doyle let him work that one out for himself, grinning when the unlikelihood of both things being true sunk in, and Bodie’s voice faded. “Cheer up, sunshine - I’ll come and fight seven ruffians with you any day…” And he had, many a time, he thought, so maybe there was something in the story after all… “You sure you ‘aven’t got any medals lying around you forgot..?”

“Ham hock terrine, with coriander and prunes..?” the waiter announced, and Bodie looked up appreciatively and nodded. “Butternut squash soup…?”

The ate quietly for a while, the food definitely not competition for anything they’d plan to serve at _The Half Moon_ , but rivalling a number of places in London that Doyle could think of. “Reckon we should get Brooklyn to give us a write-up like that for the back of our menus?” he asked, suddenly picturing it out of the blue. “ _The soldiers name was William Bodie_ …”

“… _and having fought for a variety of military groups who paid him well_ …” Bodie wrinkled his nose. “Not got quite the same ring to it, has it?”

“Suppose not… Or … _so the soldier and the ex-police constable took the villains to George Cowley_ …”

Bodie coughed suddenly, and went red in the face, putting his knife and fork down, and hiding his face in a linen napkin for a moment, shoulders shaking. When he took it away again, he was making a valiant effort to look serious, though the crinkles around his eyes gave him away. “He wouldn’t have let us in anyplace like this to start with, would he?”

Doyle grinned back, remembering all those meetings at Cowley’s club… _grab a sausage sandwich at Nellie’s caf_ … He picked up his glass of wine, watched it glint in the candlelight, in the warmth of their evening together. “To the Cow,” he said, and Bodie nodded, tapped their glasses together.

“Who’d’ve thought it’d be our turn to retire,” he said, “I thought Cowley’d go on forever, never mind us…”

Doyle just nodded, and they sat quietly. The waiter returned to take away their plates, and then to bring their main course, they drank their wine and Doyle felt Bodie bump their knees together. Outside the river flowed softly, the moon shone down, and time moved slowly and implacably onwards, but here at their own small table, for now, it had slowed a little, just for them.

 

**Chapter Eleven**

The next few days were a whirl of lessons and Christmas preparations, far more than Doyle had imagined a pub this quiet would need to make.

“We open up for a while on Christmas,” Burt had told them, “Most of the locals pop in at some point or another after their dinner, stuff their faces even more.”

“The traditional post-prandial _prandium_ ,” Roland joked. “Latin for dinner,” he explained when they looked blankly at him, so that Bodie caught Doyle’s eye, raised an enquiring eyebrow.

But when they brought up the idea with Burt and Brooklyn that Roland might be let in on the cloth, they found themselves outvoted in passion, if not numbers.

“He’s got thin lips,” Brooklyn said, when Bodie asked her outright what she didn’t like about Roland. “They’re thin and cruel, and people with thin lips are always spiteful and mean…”

“People can’t help the shape of their lips, love,” Doyle said, trying to be comforting, though he could see he wasn’t succeeding. “And he might be a bit gung-ho over the brewery, but I promise, _nothing_ is going to make us get rid of you - or anyone who works here, that Burt vouches for.”

“We didn’t buy this place to burn it down to the ground,” Bodie agreed, “You know us better that than, mate.”

Burt nodded at Brooklyn. “I wouldn’t have sold to Bodie if I thought otherwise,” he said, “And he still owes me from…”

“Oh, here we go,” Bodie interrupted, but he grinned at Brooklyn too. “See - he wouldn’t let me if I tried. And if you’re both so dead against him, we won’t tell Roland about the code either.”

“He’s a snoop, too,” Brooklyn said in a low voice, as if she wasn’t sure whether she should speak. “I saw him looking through the windows of your cottage when I came down from Sam’s farm this morning.”

“Our cottage?” Doyle asked, feeling suddenly alert, despite knowing there was very little to be alert about. Their laptops were there, of course, but no one would ever get through their security to the Chapman material, which wasn’t directly on their own hard drives anyway. There were various cameras, their stereo and other bits of electronics, but just ordinary possessions, nothing it would really be worth anyone’s effort to steal, not these days - even presuming Roland was scoping it out for someone. 

“He was probably just taking a look around,” Bodie said, and Doyle hoped he wasn’t as convinced as he sounded. “Thought we weren’t in, figured he’d have a nose. He’s been asking about the history of the place, it’s one of his things.”

“Happy about that, are you?” Burt asked, and Bodie glared at him.

“Not a hundred per cent, no - but it’s nosiness, not thuggishness.”

“He’s right,” Doyle said, in what he hoped was a placating tone, “’es probably just having a look around the place - he’s going to be living here for the next month, after all.”

“Hmmn,” was all Burt would say, striding off to see what Joanna was up to for dinner, and Brooklyn sidled up to the other end of the bar, busied herself sorting out glasses that were already perfectly sorted. 

Roland brought them in a second Christmas tree, of blue faux-fir, presumably to sit on the end of the bar nearest the door and look nautical, hung all around with _Fathoms Brewery_ themed decorations, and topped with a rather voluptuous figurehead. It unfolded neatly from its box, decorations and all, so that Bodie the traditionalist swallowed and ducked his head down, either outraged or ridiculously amused, Doyle thought. It wasn’t that it was tacky, it wasn’t that it was marketing of the most gaudy and obvious kind… it was more that it was all these things, and that they couldn’t very well refuse it when it was offered freely by someone they’d invited to do the job.

Burt stood staring at it, blinking, and for a moment Doyle thought he was going to say something, but he nodded at Roland instead, and wandered off yet again to some important task or other that he’d set himself, as the departing owner, a habit he seemed to indulge whenever Roland was around. 

“They’re gonna think that was our idea, you know,” Bodie said later, tipping his head to Brooklyn’s gang of farm lads, who were examining the tree with great and uproarious delight, flicking the tiny lighthouses and seagulls, and the Fathoms beermats hanging from silver ribbons.

Doyle shrugged. “Not much we can do about it, unless we want to offend him properly, is there? He didn’t have to bring it, ‘s not like it was included in the price of the sessions.”

“He’s pushing this brewery lark, isn’t he - how come he didn’t know we were a freehold to start with?” Bodie asked, and all Doyle could do was shrug again.

“Was all a bit last minute, wasn’t it - maybe he ‘adn’t ‘ad time to do his research properly. Can’t fault him over the paperwork now though - he’s more than made up for it.”

It felt as if Roland wanted to bury them in paperwork some mornings, though Doyle knew it was all part of setting up as publicans these days, making sure they’d satisfied every regulation, and even every recommendation. He could even see the value of what Bodie called _the marketing guff_ that they had to go through - to the point of being set scenarios to play out, to their dismay - the summer’s tourists had to come from somewhere, and if they didn’t want to lose them to Bridport, or Charmouth or anywhere else, then they needed to convince them to come _here_ , to Downsey.

Though Doyle didn’t want to admit it, it was always something of a relief to get away for a while, to secrete himself in a room of the cottage and lose himself in the hunt for their red spy and her connections, and from the guilty look on Bodie’s face at times, he felt it too.

“Good job I know you’re not having an affair,” Bodie said to him one afternoon, catching him emerging from the bedroom when he should have been behind the bar with Brooklyn for an hour or two.

“How d’you know I’m not?” Doyle asked, wondering whether to be outraged, giving it up as a bad job. “Nah, you’re right, I ‘aven’t got the energy. Any news?”

Bodie shook his head. “Nothing that I can see - thought I might have something between Nardin and our chap in Manchester, but it turned out to be smoke and mirrors.”

“Jax called earlier - said to say happy Christmas.”

“Hey, maybe we should invite the lads down here sometime - show ‘em how life is really lived,” Bodie suggested, and Doyle sniggered.

“Maybe we’d better wait until we’ve worked out how life is really lived, eh?”

“You not liking it?” Bodie leaned back against the wall, looking lazy and casual, but Doyle could see a tension in him.

He blinked. “We only just got here - bound to be… unsettling, isn’t it?” Was Bodie alright? Here he’d been assuming…

But Bodie pulled him into a hug, and he let himself be pulled, and they stood there for a while, warm in the yellow glow of the hallway light, and Doyle wasn’t sure who was comforting who.

In the end they went back to the bar together, Doyle slipping into place behind it just in time to pull creditable pints for Sam and Clarry, who’d apparently escaped their young ones for some afternoon Christmas shopping. 

“You sure you should be?” Doyle asked, with the authority of both his age, and the delivery of several squalling infants in his time on the beat, as he passed her glass over. 

“They used to prescribe porter at the GPs,” Clarry said, settling herself with difficulty on one of bar stools, her husband’s hand hovering behind her every second of the way. “Give over Sam - as if you could catch me if I did fall, the size of me! _Iron Filings_ has got to be as good as Guinness.”

“I don’t think they do that anymore,” Bodie interrupted with a grin. “But I’m all for keeping a pregnant woman happy, so sup up!”

Doyle rolled his eyes, though he had a fair idea that Clarry would do whatever she wanted no matter what anyone told her.

“It didn’t hurt the others,” she said complacently. “Besides, this is only my seventh…” she paused, eyed them challengingly, “…since I got pregnant eight months ago.”

Sam squeezed her reprovingly, looking, Doyle thought, proud as punch, and when Bodie gave her a wide, happy grin in return, he rather wished he could do the same. He knew he _could_ , in theory, these days, but it still wasn’t quite the thing, barring a football match, or maybe, he thought optimistically, a new year’s celebration. Maybe this year, surrounded by new people, he’d surprise Bodie by giving him a proper hug - a kiss an’ all… Maybe he just needed to get used to the idea… He settled for smiling at Bodie across the bar, pinching a mouthful of his _Joy_ , and enjoying the brush of their fingers when Bodie took his glass back, mock-indignantly.

“Not supposed to be drinking on duty,” he said severely, “Doesn’t set a good example…”

“Says who?” Burt asked suddenly, appearing from his office around the corner, “Pull yourself a half Ray, and Bodie, you shut your face! How’re you doing, Clarry, love?”

“Big enough to burst,” Clarry said, “And mean with it.”

“That’s just the prospect of Christmas shopping,” Sam said cheerfully, “And having to see your mum on the way home.”

“She’ll tell me I’m doing everything wrong,” Clarry explained, without any scruples, “Drives me mad. If I’m like that with our lot, just shoot me.”

“If you’re not shot long before that. Right - you ready, girl?” Sam was hovering behind Clarry again, as she seesawed her way off the stool much as she’d got onto it. “I trust you lot’ll be round on Boxing Day?” He paused to explain to Bodie and Doyle. “Clarry always cooks too much - ow - so we have an open day, and most people drop in at some point. Come have another look for secret compartments, if you like!”

Doyle winced inside at the friendly, open volume of it, but Roland was safely away with his other clients, and the only other table - a local family who’d moved away and come back to visit their offspring in their too-small house - were oblivious to anyone except themselves and their dinner plans.

“By the way,” Clarry called back over her shoulder, as Sam opened the door for her, “Nice Christmas tree, Burt!”

“Hmmmn,” said Burt.

Wednesday became Thursday became Friday, and the Christmas tree underwent some mysterious changes, to Doyle’s amusement. First the seagulls disappeared, and were replaced by tiny, cherubic looking angels, then the lighthouses were replaced by bells, white tinsel was strung all around, and eventually the beermats vanished in favour of dozens of tiny wooden toys and figures. He didn’t say anything, and neither did Bodie, even when the figurehead turned into an angel of the purest white, long, smock-like dress done right up to the neck of her - or his - androgynous body, but they looked admiringly at Burt and Brooklyn in equal measure, though each declared their innocence in their own way, and Doyle secretly wondered if it was Bodie he should be looking sideways at. He wished he’d thought of it himself.

Roland tried to look amused when he saw each change, but his smile was a little grim, and his comments seemed restrained. “I just hope the original decorations find their way back into the box!” he said loudly and obviously on Christmas eve, as the angel stared down at him with a surprisingly wicked glint in her eye… 

…or maybe that was the gin and tonics he’d been putting away since about six o’clock, Doyle thought, honest with himself, and the bottle of wine they’d had with dinner, and… Bodie was looking good tonight, he thought, watching him surreptitiously from his corner of the bar as Brooklyn showed him how to make a Martini Sunrise, or whatever it was that girl had asked for - one of Brooklyn’s friends, she was, on the small side, with curly brown hair a bit like his… a bit like his had once been, he corrected himself.

Bodie poured grenadine down the side of the drink, and Doyle watched it trace its way to the bottom of the glass, just like a sunset, that was, if a sunset was all liquid-y like that…

“Alright mate?”

Bodie was very quick sometimes, he thought, one minute over by the bar, the next minute here by him…

“Yeah… hey, what time d’you get off, then?”

“Stroke of midnight, I turn back into a handsome prince,” Bodie said, eyeing him up and down so that Doyle made himself sit up a little straighter. “How pissed are you?”

“Not pissed at all - just… mellow.”

“Mellow, eh?” 

“Yeah…”

“Funny how time flies, isn’t it?”

“What d’you mean? _Oi_!” This last as Bodie took his glass and finished his last g and t in a single swallow. “What d’you mean time flies?”

“Well, here it is midnight, and I get to take my handsome prince home!”

“Shhhhh…” He looked around anxiously - the bar was busy tonight, people would hear…

“Night Burt!” Bodie patted him on the back to get him moving, and Doyle obediently headed for the door, stepping out into their own winter wonderland. 

**Chapter Twelve**

They woke to a white Christmas, to pale light glowing past curtains they hadn’t closed, to the warmth of each other in bed. Doyle took a deep, sleepy breath against Bodie’s shoulder, let it out slowly as his dreams slid away with the daytime. No mad Irishmen or Bulgarians or Spanish - no one from _any_ where - threatening to set off bombs in Christmas trees if they didn’t get to them in time… and Bodie right there, safe beside him. Christmas day. No reason to get out of bed if he didn’t want to, and - he pressed forward slowly, languorously - some very good reasons for staying right where he was…

He leaned up to kiss Bodie’s lips, soft from sleep, and Bodie mumbled something, lifting his groin against the duvet. He’d felt that, Doyle thought, with lazy satisfaction, beneath the covers Bodie was morning hard, and maybe now he was dreaming of Doyle… He thought for a moment, let a thousand possibilities slide through this mind, his imagination, grasped one that set his own cock to hardening still further, and slipped down the bed, under the duvet himself, to kiss Bodie’s stomach in the darkness, teasing himself with the feel of Bodie’s cock hard against his face for a moment, then opening his mouth and taking him in in one long glide, as far as he could go, lips holding him tight… He used his tongue, and his breath, and held Bodie’s hips with both hands when he began to thrust, so that he’d wake surely, dreams becoming reality…

Bodie did wake, but instead of letting go, instead of coming in the warmth and heaven of Doyle’s mouth, he reached fingers down, brought Doyle back above the covers to kiss him, eyes closed, Doyle saw, so that he might still be dreaming, sleep-fucking… But then Bodie opened his eyes, smiled at him and nuzzled at his lips again, and then he shifted himself so that Doyle could turn over, so that he could slide his cock along the cleft of Doyle’s arse, a tease, and again, and then… Doyle gasped as he always did, as he always had, as he could never help himself, the size of Bodie coming into him, and then Bodie’s hand around his own cock when he lifted up, so that they moved together in perfect accord, a comfortable, familiar rhythm that was life itself, and that was still the best thing that he ever did, the most exciting, the thing that took him higher than… and then he was coming, feeling Bodie push into him once, twice… three times more, and then Bodie stiffened himself, and Doyle heard him gasp his own perfect moment, arms tightening around Doyle, as together as they could ever be…

When he woke to the world again, Bodie was still holding him close, he was still filled with Bodie’s cock, softening even as he thought it, and perhaps barely a minute had gone past. He was glad, he was happy to lie there, to feel Bodie all around him, his heart beating against his shoulder blades, his breath warm and even across his neck…

Ticklish, though.

He sniffed, moved his head slightly, and Bodie stirred, squeezing him quickly, then pulling away, so that Doyle felt strangely empty for a moment, until Bodie tugged him over onto his back, into the space he’d left, kissed him again.

“Morning, Santa Claus,” he said with a grin, so that Doyle could only grin back at his smugness.

“Happy Christmas to you too,” he said back, then couldn’t resist. “Never thought I’d get my stocking filled at my age…”

“How crude!” Bodie sniffed, in his best la-di-dah accent, then grinned and kissed Doyle again, all the way down his neck, which he knew always made Doyle shiver, until he finally bit down with his teeth too, sucking in a way that shot straight to Doyle’s groin, for all he’d just come, for all he was far too old to manage twice in a row any more, for all that he really shouldn’t let him… But he did, Bodie marking him for Christmas, _mine_ …

“Quite finished?” he asked severely when Bodie finally let him go again, leaning back and tipping his head to one side to admire his handiwork. But he thought back to days when he’d let Bodie do anything he liked, days when he’d let himself be bound, because Bodie wanted to see it, wanted to have him like that, just because Bodie wanted it, and he thought that this morning, this perfect Christmas morning, he’d have let him again, whatever he wanted, as long as what Bodie wanted was _him_ …

But Bodie didn’t want to mark him anymore, he stilled and his smile faded, and then very seriously he said, “No.”

Doyle looked up at him, unblinking.

“Not finished with you, Ray - never be finished with you…” and then he kissed him again, as if they hadn’t been kissing half the morning away already, and all Doyle could do was kiss him back.

 

They had their own Christmas lunch together in the cottage, a relatively modest feast, but with no one else to worry about but themselves, and then unwrapped the presents under their tree, a few jointly-owned, from this or that old mate, wishing them well, a picture of the two of them together last summer from Burt, set in a simple glass frame, that Bodie took straight upstairs and settled on a spare hook on their bedroom wall.

Doyle watched Bodie’s face light up with laughter and happiness when he opened the fossil hunters kit, congratulating himself on having found the perfect present to round off the _Only Fools and Horses_ box set, the navy blue scarf, and the long blue silk underwear, and then turned to his own final box. It was a perfect, solid cube of a gift, and inside… was a fossil hunters kit, complete with hammer and chisel and a holster for his tools, so that the only thing he could do again was reach over to grab Bodie around the neck, pulling them together and kissing him yet again.

“We can take our little hammers out together later,” he said, and Bodie leered happily at him.

“Promises, promises,” he camped, then reached out and ruffled Doyle’s curls, slung an arm around his shoulders, and picked up his book about Mary Anning.

Eventually they had to go next door, though Doyle was tempted to try seducing Bodie back to bed instead - there was a part of him that wanted this day, the first day they’d had in ages, just for themselves. But Bodie was right, Burt might still be running it whilst they felt their way around, but they were the owners of _The Half Moon_ now, and it would only be manners to show their face for their first Christmas there.

“We don’t have to stay long,” Bodie said softly in his ear, “We can be like Cowley - pop in for a regal malt whisky and then come home and stick a dvd on…”

“You think the old man went home and watched dvds?” Doyle asked, distracted. “What d’you think he watched?”

“ _The Clangers_ ,” Bodie said decisively, “Now will you come _on_?”

The pub was actually quite lively when they got there - Burt was behind the bar with Brooklyn, chatting to a rather brassily blonde woman; Ron, Phil and Modger were in a corner with a few other locals that Doyle recognised from their summer and occasional later visits to Downsey; and Roland was in what looked to be a very intense conversation with a couple of blokes who must have been eighty years old if they were a day. 

Ron raised a hand to beckon him over, and Doyle was just about to gesture _want a drink_? when Burt hailed them with a great roar that momentarily stopped conversation across the room. 

“Ray! Bodie - get yourselves over here, there’s someone I want you to meet!”

Only slightly three sheets to the wind, Doyle thought fairly, noting the roses in Burt’s cheeks - and on the end of his nose. 

“This lady here,” Burt was saying, “Is Rebecca Armstrong, mother of our very own Brooklyn. Becky - Bodie and Ray are going to be taking over _The Half Moon_ , and they’ve promised me they’re going to look after it until the end of days, haven’t you mate!”

“Pleased to meet you,” Becky said, her voice as husky as her daughter’s, “Brooklyn’s been telling me all about you. She said you’re from London.”

“Lately,” Doyle agreed, “Came down here for a holiday last summer - somehow ended up moving in…”

“Dorset’s like that,” Becky said knowingly, “It gets to you. When I was a kid all I wanted to do was get away, but it brings you back.”

“Where did you get to, then?” Bodie asked, though he knew very well, and settled politely in at the bar with her, nodding at what he knew were half-truths. Doyle stood back a bit whilst Brooklyn pulled pints for them, and after a moment became aware of a tall blond by the jukebox - he must have been in the men’s when they came in - eyeing Bodie with a worried expression. Becky leaned forward, resting a hand on Bodie’s arm, and the blond moved in - to be greeted with a warm smile from Becky, who released Bodie and clutched the blond’s hand instead.

“Bodie, this is Tom,” Becky was saying, “Tom, Bodie and - was it Ray? - have bought _The Half Moon_ from Burt, he’s off to New Zealand…”

Tom nodded to them both. “Are you from around here?” and so it began all over again. Doyle supposed they’d have to get used to it for a while, they were the new boys after all. He tried to remember whether Burt had mentioned any Tom, came up a blank - whoever he was he was at least ten years younger than Becky, but he seemed smitten, and that, Doyle decided in his own haze of love, not yet vanished from the morning, was hopefully all they needed.

They gave Brooklyn her Christmas present - her eyes smiled at the glittery nail polish kit that Bodie’d found for her, but they positively shone when she saw the book underneath it.

“For me? Really? This is amazing, wait ‘til I show Zanna and Nikki!”

Job well done there, he thought. “We thought you might fancy trying some of them out - _a taste of history at the Moon_ or something,” he suggested, and she nodded absently, already turning the pages again.

He slipped off eventually to greet Ron and the lads, falling happily into the language of bikes and engines that he’d not realised he’d missed until now. The evening unwound around him - he kept an eye on Bodie, and Bodie looked around for him now and then, caught his gaze, and they walked the social whirl that was _The Half Moon_. Sam and Clarry appeared with their mob for an hour or so at some point - _on our way back from mum’s_ , Clarry said, adding a heartfelt thank god - the kids shooed into the snug to be entertained by - and entertain - Brooklyn. Sam paused by Tom and Becky as he gathered drinks at the bar, and Clarry explained brightly that Sam had bought a couple of fields up behind Firrester Farm, had parked his old Routemaster bus in one corner, and was planning to start his own smallholding there.

“He’s been keen on Becky since he got here, though god knows why, she’s a nice enough woman, but not much _there_ , if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Phil said, quiet-voiced, “He seems just the type she goes for, doesn’t he?”

A couple of the lads nodded. “She doesn’t need the aggro when things are looking up for her, either.”

“Tom’s no aggro,” Clarry said, firmly, “He’s clean as a whistle - well, as a whistle that doesn’t mind the odd smoke now and then, but who doesn’t?”

Doyle decided to pretend he was far enough away that he could only hear what he wanted to hear, let the village gossip go on around him.

“Yeah, but he’s years younger than her - I mean we’ve all heard about younger women, but… he could probably go for Brooklyn if he wanted, why pick Becky?”

“Becky’s alright,” Modger said, “She just needs a bit of looking after…”|

“…by someone who isn’t a total waster,” Ron agreed. “If you reckon this bloke’s alright, Clarry…”

What would they do if Clarry said he wasn’t, Doyle wondered, amused, send him packing from Higher Downsey with his tail between his legs? Or just warn him off their local women, maybe back it up with the sharp end of a Kawasaki exhaust pipe? 

“Ah - there they go…” Modger said, with satisfaction, and sure enough, Tom was saying goodnight to Sam and Bodie, and Becky was waving through to Brooklyn in the snug, and then leading him happily across the room, presumably to retire for the night.

“And it’s barely nine o’clock,” said Bodie, a happily scandalised voice in Doyle’s ear, sitting down at the table beside him. 

“They’ve probably gone to have… hot chocolate,” Doyle said innocently, liking the smile that Bodie gave in return. Maybe they’d manage twice today after all. “You remember Ron and Phil and Modger - did you meet Kev and Benny?” He gestured to the last two men at the table, both in black leather jackets, just as the others were.

“Local Hell’s Angels, is it?” Bodie asked, with all the tact Doyle had come to expect of him, but Modger only grinned and raised his glass to him.

“You wait - Doyle tells us you ride - we’ll get you out there with us one day!”

“Ah, strictly in my reckless youth,” Bodie declaimed, though he was almost as likely to go out on his bike still as Doyle was. “I leave that sort of thing to Evel Knievel here.”

“Says the man who took on the widowmaker…”

Bodie was unfairly saved, Doyle considered, when Clarry’s three children sped up, Evel Knievel-like themselves, having dodged the various customers and obstacles between the snug and Clarry, to come to a stop at their table, demanding to know when the lights would be turned off.

“Turned off?” Bodie wondered out loud, and Sam grinned.

“Like the Blackpool Illuminations, but in reverse…”

Clarry smacked him. “Hush you - it’s lovely! It’s all this lot come to see really - Burt dims the lights about nine and turns the Christmas tree on. I think Sal originally did it as a hint to everyone to clear off and leave them alone, but it backfired somewhat…”

“Alright, alright…” Burt emerged from behind the bar, hands held above his head in surrender. “If it’ll get you lot off my back…”

“He loves it really,” Clarry declared, loud enough to be sent a glowering look from Burt that simply bounced off her.

“Yeayyyyyy!” The three children cheered, as Burt reached out with one hand to a set of light switches on the wall, and with a foot that had suddenly lost its shoe to an alarmingly long extension socket lying nearby on the floor.

“Three - two - _one_!” the children screamed, but they were accompanied by the deeper tones of everyone else there in the pub, and as they called _lights_!, there was a sudden moment of darkness before the big Christmas tree was brilliantly illuminated in a flood of tiny coloured fairy lights, garnering an _ahhhh_ , from everyone - even Doyle. Another _click_ , and more fairylights appeared in a row all around the ceiling, a third and the mirrored wall behind the bar came alive with them, and then finally there was a tiny flash in the far corner, and the little _Fathoms_ tree was revealed to be covered in rows and twines of tiny red reindeer-shaped glows.

“Let’s hope that lot’s grounded,” Bodie murmured, and Doyle dug him in the stomach with his elbow, entranced despite himself. 

“There - and that’s us gone,” Sam declared, draining the last of his pint. “Come on you lot, let’s be having you…”

There was a chorus of groans as three children were packed back into their coats and out the door, to cheerful farewells from everyone there, and the place suddenly bore a semblance of peace once more.

“…try Michael’s over in Yeovil, I’m telling you…” Phil was saying determinedly to Modger, via Doyle, when something, some quiet but out of place noise, made Doyle look up suddenly. He tilted his head to hear better over the hum and chatter of voices to either side of him - Bodie leaning across the table now to talk to Burt - and sure enough, there it was again. Something… it had been a thump the first time, then a kind of clatter and clang, coming from somewhere past the bar, down the hallway that led to the rest of the building… not right - not right at all…

He slapped Bodie on the thigh to get him to shift, and at just that moment there was another sound, louder this time across a lull in the barroom conversation - a scream, high-pitched and scared.

“Go!”

Their training got them across the room first, instinct leading them to act rather than react to the note of fear and danger, down the hall, and through a doorway into Burt’s own office, where John Roland was standing at bay from Brooklyn, who was holding a poker from the fireplace firmly in two hands as if it was a rounders bat, face pale, eyes determined.

“Brooklyn?” Burt pushed between them into the centre of the room, Bodie following so that he had support if he needed it. Doyle took a couple of steps forward, but stayed near the door, swinging it shut behind him to forestay anyone else who’d charged after them.

“He was creeping around your safe with a torch,” Brooklyn said, voice shaky, “He’s a burglar!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Roland said, in a low, angry voice, “Foster - call your girl off, she’s gone mad!”

“What are you doing, John?” Bodie asked, in a reasonable voice, “Funny place to be in the middle of a party.”

“I was about to go to bed when I realised one of the stones from my ring was missing - I remembered knocking my hand on the wall in here when Burt and I were talking earlier…”

Doyle looked enquiringly at Burt, who nodded. 

“Well it’s been handed down in my family for generations - I didn’t want it lost after it’s survived all that time! I came to look for the bloody thing!”

“Why didn’t you turn the lights on?”

“I couldn’t find the switch - it’s on the wrong side of the door, look!”

Doyle did, knowing Bodie wouldn’t take his eyes off the man. The switch was indeed strangely placed, half-hidden behind the door rather than where a hand would automatically find it when coming into the room.

“Burt keeps a torch on his desk - I’ve seen it a dozen times.”

There would have been enough light from the hallway for him to pick up the torch, Doyle supposed, so that he could find the light switch - but surely not enough to search for a misplaced gemstone, especially one small enough to fit into the setting of a ring.

“You can see for yourself if you don’t believe me!” Roland added, holding out his left hand, on which gleamed a gaudy golden ring that Doyle had noticed before - an oddly jewelled thing for a bloke to wear, he’d thought at the time.

Brooklyn breathed in when Roland moved, as if she might leap on him at any moment, but Burt was already talking to her.

“It’s alright Brooklyn, come here to me, we’ll look after it now…”

She lowered the poker slowly, came to stand by Burt’s side, but although she let him take it from her hands, Doyle could see she was still tense, and very unhappy.

“He wasn’t looking for a stone, he was nosing around your safe!”

“What safe?” Roland asked, voice nothing but exasperation, “If Burt’s got a safe in here then I don’t know where it is!”

“You’re a liar!” Brooklyn shouted, “You were standing there fiddling with the combination when I came in…”

“What combination? The girl’s hallucinating - I didn’t even know there was a safe… and look!” He crouched down suddenly, so that Doyle reached for a non-existent weapon, cursing inwardly when he realised what he was doing, but Roland had only picked something up from the carpet. He rose again, and held it out in the flat of his hand - a dark red ruby, clearly the missing stone from the ring on his opposite hand.

“Look, this is ridiculous - all this fuss because I came looking for something I’d lost. And what were you doing in here anyway?” Roland asked Brooklyn suddenly, “You’re damned focussed on that safe - Burt are you sure that everything is intact? Maybe it’s not me you should be worrying about!”

Brooklyn gasped, and Burt put out a hand to her wrist, which she shook off agitatedly. “I _wouldn’t!_ ” she said, “You _know_ I wouldn’t!”

“No, we know,” Bodie said, on her other side, “But it sounds like Roland was just looking for his ring. I think we can all…”

“I’ll have an apology from her first,” Roland said implacably, and Doyle rolled his eyes. Now was not the time…

“I _won’t_ ,” Brooklyn said in a low voice, “He’s a liar!” And she turned and pulled the door open, tearing out of the room like wild thing, her feet thudding down the hallway towards the back door, which slammed behind her as she left.

“Well that didn’t help,” said Burt. “You can’t blame her - probably frightened her to death, sneaking around with a torch…”

“No normal girl would threaten someone with a poker - with a weapon - just because she found them somewhere she didn’t expect,” Roland argued, “It’s not as if she doesn’t know me!”

No, but she doesn’t trust you, Doyle thought, and you’re not helping, are you? 

“I should go after her,” Burt began, turning to the door, but Roland interrupted again. 

“She’ll be halfway home by now - it’s not as if she doesn’t know her way around. She knows all the roads and paths, doesn’t she. You can’t go chasing her down to the village and waking her family up on Christmas night.”

If her family were even there - but then any house would be warmer than an old bus, so maybe that was where Becky and Tom had gone, though it would be a lonely comfort to Brooklyn.

“I’ll text her,” Burt said, digging into his pocket and eyeing Roland with a frown on his face. “She never ignores a text. And I’ll be checking my safe.”

“Well if you’re satisfied,” Roland replied firmly, “I’ll be going to bed - it’s where I was heading before all this unnecessary melodrama!”

Doyle couldn’t see any reason to keep him, his story seemed likely enough, in fact it was almost unassailable, so he stood back to let him past, wished he wasn’t such an staid bastard, and that they didn’t have to keep him on.

Bodie let out a long breath when he’d gone, and raised an eyebrow to Burt, who stepped across the room and shifted a photograph of himself and Sal in front of _The Half Moon_ , taken perhaps when they’d just bought it, looking young and happy in flared jeans and colourful smocks, great smiles on their faces. He stared for a moment at the silver dial that was revealed, then shook his head, and let the picture slide back. “I can’t tell if it’s been fiddled with,” he said, “I just spin the dial when I’ve finished with it, but there’s no way he could know the combination.”

“It’s not Sal’s birthday, or anything obvious like that?” Doyle asked, because he had to ask, and Burt gave him a withering stare.

“Give me some credit - I wouldn’t have survived long if I didn’t know better than that, in the jungle or back here!”

“Will Brooklyn be alright?” She might know the roads, but it was late, and very cold, and those roads were still patched with snow and ice, just waiting for someone upset to rush across, to slip them up and send them flying onto the hard, frozen road. They could be lying there until morning - longer at this time of year - before anyone spotted them. 

Burt nodded tiredly, held up his phone. “She’s safe at home,” he reported, “Like I said, she never ignores a text.”

“Is she…?”

“That’s all she said - we’ll have to talk to her in the morning, she’s due in at eleven.”

“Will she come?” Bodie wondered quietly, and Burt looked at her with a wry smile. 

“She pretty much supports her mother, and she’s on double time if she works public holidays - she’ll be in. She can’t afford to lose her job, if nothing else. And she’s not any of those things that Roland made out!”

“I know,” Bodie said, “It was probably all just a misunderstanding - we’ll sort it out.”

There was nothing else to be done, so they left Burt in his office and wandered back to the barroom, where there was only Ron and his mates left to reassure, and chivvy on their way home, and then they slid into the sharply cold night themselves to go the few paces across to their own gate, closed it firmly behind them, and were, Doyle thought, just _them_ again.

“You believe him?” Doyle asked, when they were inside, the door safely shut behind them.

Bodie paused in unwinding his scarf, looked thoughtful. “No reason not to,” he said, “Burt and Brooklyn took a dislike to him for some reason, but it doesn’t mean he’s a villain.”

Doyle nodded reluctant agreement. He might not like Roland much himself, but he didn’t have the smell of a real villain about him, more someone who might egg others on. “He doesn’t exactly put himself out to be friendly, does he?”

“Change,” Bodie said wisely, hanging his coat on their rack, and opening the door to the living room. He ushered Doyle through. “It’s one thing that we’ve bought the place, but Roland’s all about _change_ , isn’t he - modernise this, streamline that - of course he’s got them worried.”

“Yeah, but we’re not going to touch anything like that - are we?”

“You know that,” Bodie said, coming to a stop in the middle of the room so that Doyle almost walked into him. He slid an arm around Doyle’s waist, pulled him close. “And I know that, and Burt and Brooklyn probably know it deep down - but Roland doesn’t, does he? Look up.”

Doyle looked up, to where at some time during the day Bodie had managed to hang a sprig of mistletoe, green leaves and white berries hanging from a silver cord thumbtacked to the ceiling, and so they ended the day as they’d begun it, their first Christmas out of CI5, with kisses.

**Chapter Thirteen**

There was no tutorial session the next day, it was Boxing Day, and Sunday besides, though Brooklyn was already there behind the bar when they took themselves over, long before eleven. She smiled wanly at them when they came in, but she just nodded when they asked if she was alright, and wouldn’t say anything else, so they took themselves through to Burt’s office, where he was ensconced with a pile of Christmas letters, handwriting replies.

“Everything alright?” Bodie asked him when he looked up, and Burt shrugged, leaned back.

“Seems to be - except that Brooklyn’s convinced she saw Roland at the safe, trying the combination.”

“Shadows?” Doyle wondered out loud, “If the only proper light was from the hall, and he was flashing a torch around?”

“Worse than managing agents,” Bodie muttered, “And they’ve got guns.”

“We’ll probably never know,” Burt said, “Unless we catch him redhanded at something.” He sounded as if he’d be quite pleased if that happened. “But there’s nothing in the safe he’d be after anyway - deeds mostly, to this place, to the island…”

“The island?” Doyle said in surprise, “I thought you’d sold that?”

“Didn’t need to,” Burt said, looking cheerful again for the first time since the night before. “Got enough from the gold to pay queenie, thought I might as well hang onto it for a while longer…”

A tie, Doyle thought, something to bring him back if New Zealand didn’t work out, maybe, back to where Sal had been. 

“The bunnies are safe a bit longer, then,” Bodie said, rubbing his hands together. “You’re still selling us the boat though, right?”

“Mercenary old bastard,” Burt said equably, “Of course I am. You’re going to caretake the place for me!”

“Less of the old,” Bodie objected, grinning. “We thought we might go over to Sam and Clarry’s this morning, get in before the crowds…”

“…scoff all their leftovers…” Doyle interrupted, reaching out to poke Bodie in the stomach.

“…see if we can track down this secret passage.”

“I’ll come with you,” said a voice from the door, Roland, leaning casually against the doorjamb. They’d not closed it, Doyle thought with a wince, they’d not even thought to close it, despite last night. A week out in the country, and they were getting soft already… “What’s all this about secret passages?”

He’d find out anyway, if he came with them to the farm, Clarry wasn’t to know it was a secret from _him_ , something he shouldn’t know about. He caught Bodie’s eye, returned his wry look, and nodded minutely.

“Found this up at the farm the other day,” Bodie said, pulling the cloth reluctantly from his pocket. 

From his seat Burt snorted and stood up from his desk. “I’ll go up and see them at the farm later - I usually do,” he said, and strode past Roland without a look, so that Doyle felt guilty all over again.

“A secret way!” Roland said, sounding quite excited for him, “And what’s this… directions!” He mulled over the markings for a whilst, humming now and then to himself. “As far as I can make out, you’ll be looking for a room facing east, either wooden panels with an opening somewhere to be found in that marked on, a stone floor - I think that must be right - a stone floor, and a cupboard. And you say you found this up at the farm?”

They nodded, there was no help for it.

“Well, if you don’t mind me coming along, I might be of some help - I had a feeling about this place, you know, riddled with history! Are you off now?”

They were still wearing their coats and boots, so it was no use pretending they weren’t. Doyle nodded, and they waited for Roland to go upstairs and fetch his own.

“It should have been Burt and Brooklyn coming,” Doyle muttered in a low voice, but Bodie shrugged his shoulders.

“Can’t help it if they’ve taken against the bloke,” he said surprisingly, and somewhat unfairly, Doyle thought. “If they miss out, it’s their own fault.”

Roland was back then, so that Doyle couldn’t say anything else, but he looked at Bodie disapprovingly, which just washed over him as most of Doyle’s looks seemed to.

“Look I’ve just realised I need to get down to the village before the shop shuts,” Roland said, “I’ll meet you up at the farmhouse, shall I?”

“Alright - you’ll want to hurry though if you’re gonna beat this lump to the leftovers,” Doyle said, trying as best he could to sound normal, so that Roland smiled briefly at him, before stomping away down the hallway.

They followed him, separating to their different directions at the doorway. If anything it felt even colder outside than it had last night, the thermometer on the wall of the pub reading an impressive minus eight degrees, striking everything from their minds except getting as quickly as they could up to Sam and Clarry’s. They walked in silence, a hard frost lying over the snow that had already fallen, so that the world had a peculiar, crunching echo that discouraged disturbance. Doyle walked closely beside Bodie again, so that their be-gloved hands brushed now and then, gave into the luxury of thinking about the way Bodie had pulled on his new thermal underwear that morning, the way it clung to him in just the right way, emphasising muscles that might not work as well as they once had done, but were still taut, still just the right size and shape to give Doyle his own glow, one that had nothing to do with the cold air.

Around them the Dorset countryside stretched, their new home, full of more secrets and mysteries to be uncovered than anywhere he’d lived before, Doyle thought. Even London hadn’t felt this… big, and strange when he’d first moved down, back when he’d been full of vim and vigour as his new Serge had said, ready to take on the whole world. He thought now that maybe he just wanted to wrap that world around them, him and Bodie, see if they could make it to the end of their days together, now that they’d got this far…

“Oi, gloomy!” Bodie broke the silence, nudging him with an elbow, and pulling him to a stop. They were halfway up the common, high enough to see across Higher Downsey to the sea, and over fields in every other direction, still covered in snow, the sky stretching high and wide above them. 

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Bodie said eventually, so that Doyle looked at him in surprise. “Looks like all the picture books my mum used to read to me when I was little - I always thought the countryside looked like this, until I got out into it. Doesn’t so much, around the Wirral,” he explained, to Doyle’s enquiring look. “Bit more grey, covered in smog when I was there.”

“Derby too,” Doyle agreed, though he vaguely remembered his mum taking them out to the countryside now and then, around Christmas time, and sometimes he’d escaped there with a mate or two, rather than put up with another day at school. It hadn’t been like this though - it had felt wilder, somehow, less friendly. “You living a childhood dream, then?”

Bodie looked at him, standing closer than he needed to, with all the space around him, and he nodded, smiled faintly. “I reckon we are, aren’t we?”

Doyle leaned in and kissed him for that - not caring whether anyone could see them out in the open like this, and Bodie grinned into his lips, and then patted him on the back to get them going again. 

“Come on - someone’s got to go and eat those leftovers…”

“…and it might as well be you…” Doyle finished for him, and Dorset felt a little smaller again, a little more _his_.

 

Sam and Clarry were happy to see them - “ _Adult conversation_!” Sam exclaimed in delight, so that Clarry cuffed him gently around the head before nodding in agreement and bringing a huge plate of what turned out to be ginger buns to the table. She ladled them each out a glass of mulled wine, and sat down with them at the kitchen table. From a room somewhere to the back of the building could be heard a curious shushing noise, amidst beeps, groans and shrieks of delight.

“The wonders of _Wii_ ,” Sam explained, “They’re all out skiing without actually getting wet, dirty, or into trouble.”

“Are we the first here?” Bodie asked, through a mouthful of bun, but Clarry shook her head, smiling. 

“Not even close - the cows have still got to be milked, so we had Simon and Carl in around eight, then old Tony came past on his morning constitutional - he’s seventy five years old, and he says he hasn’t missed a day except for when he was on national service. Oh, and Peggy, on her way to work - said it cheered her up to come here first, when she knew she was going to be stuck arguing with customers over the Boxing Day sales…”

“You think it’s going to be peaceful somewhere like this,” Sam said mournfully, “Bit isolated maybe, in the winter, but it’s all just wishful thinking…”

“Oh shut up, you love it really…” Clarry said, looking up momentarily at a thump from the backroom, cheerfully ignoring it when the squealing began again. “You on the hunt for more secrets?” she asked them, an apparent _non sequitur_ until Doyle realised she’d been gazing down the hallway past their hidden panel.

“Can we?” Bodie asked, “We’ve found something you might be interested in…” He pulled the cloth from his pocket again, Doyle half-wondering if they should be treating it a bit more respectfully.

Clarry flinched away. “Not that thing again…”

“No, look - it’s not black magic,” Bodie said, as if they’d ever thought it was, “It’s directions to a hidden passageway - a room facing east, with a stone floor and panelling!”

“Panelling when that cloth was made, anyway,” Sam said thoughtfully, turning it around so that he could look at it. “A lot of it was sold years ago to pay for repairs, apparently.”

“Oh…” Bodie couldn’t have looked more disappointed if he tried, and Doyle watched in amusement as Clarry tried to reassure him.

“But that’s mostly the rooms upstairs - and they’re not the ones with stone floors, are they?” She shot her husband a derisive look. “And the room the kids are in is new-ish - added just before the First World War I think, so you won’t need to bother with that one… or the scullery, I don’t think that ever had panelling.”

“That leaves three other rooms it could be,” Sam said, getting more into the spirit of it. “You might bump into our artists in the sitting room on the right - that’s the one we give over to B and B guests.”

“I think they’re out,” Clarry told him, “But you wanted to meet them anyway, didn’t you?” She turned to Doyle, who nodded.

“If they’re around, yeah…”

“Well, I’m just going to check on the calves we got last week,” Sam said, “Then I’ll come and take a look with you. Suppose I’d better see if that rabble want to come - they could use some fresh air…” He wandered off down the hallway, and returned bare seconds later trailed by this three young ones, who chorused “Hello-Mr-Bodie-hello-Mr-Ray!” as if they’d been drilled to it - perhaps they had, Doyle thought, with a glance at Clarry, who was looking proudly after them.

“You coming, Clarry?” Bodie asked, getting to his feet, and gathering up the cloth, but she shook her head.

“Not really my thing,” she said, and Doyle had a feeling she was still worried about the idea of black magic, no matter what they’d said.

So he and Bodie trooped out of the kitchen down the hallway, pausing to survey their surroundings. At the far end, the door to the room on the left had been left wide open, revealing a scattering of toys, and a bright, light interior, obviously the children’s room. The door to the room beside that was closed though, and they peered in, finding it a kind of study, with two desks, topped with computers, and a couple of bookcases. It was lined in rich dark panelling however, and they stared around at it for a few moments, in dismay. How would they work out which eight panels in particular they were supposed to be looking at?

“There must be some reason for putting _eight_ squares of panelling in the directions,” Bodie said at last, “Maybe we should be looking for somewhere which has only got eight - over a window or beside the fireplace or something?”

There was nowhere like that in this room though, so they took themselves back into the hallway, and looked into the room nearest them - the scullery. Doyle stared at it for a moment, piled high with tins of food, and sacks of flour and rice and god knew what else, a pile of shoes and shoe polish tins in another corner, a washing machine and dryer under a tiny window, through which they could just about make out the soon-to-be-setting sun.

“Bodie,” he said, trying his best to not to sound as if he wanted to knock his own head against the wall repeatedly. “None of the rooms on this side face east, do they?”

Bodie looked at him, then at the window, then let his own head drop to Doyle’s shoulder.

“Bollocking hell,” he said.

CI5-methodical, they went back to the far end of the hallway and began on the right hand side, the east side of the house, in what looked like the bed and breakfast guestroom. There were a couple of comfortable looking sofas, a television with a dvd player, and a freeview box, and the coffee table was spread with brochures and pamphlets from the Dorset Tourist Board. The panelling was different in here, it didn’t look as old, and wasn’t so dark, and the squares were a different size. This time they tapped every panel they could reach, expecting at any moment to see one slide back as the one in the hall had done, but they were disappointed. Nothing happened at all.

They were just about to move on to the next room when they heard footsteps in the hall, and voices, and then someone looked into the sitting room. It was a man, thin and tall, and wearing glasses on his long nose.

“Hallo!” he said. “Clarry told me you were treasure-hunting, how are you getting on?”

“Not a sausage,” Bodie said, more cheerfully than it deserved.

Doyle looked behind the first man, and saw another peering in behind him, younger, with rather screwed-up eyes and a wide mouth. “You must be the artists,” he said, moving nearer to shake hands. “I’m Ray Doyle - that’s Bodie. Clarry’s new neighbours.”

“That’s us,” the first man said, shaking his hand firmly and coming further into the room so that his friend could join them properly. “What is it you’re looking for, then?”

Doyle didn’t particularly want to tell strangers any more than he’d wanted to tell Roland, but there was no help for it. Bodie must have felt the same way, because he said simply “There’s supposed to be a sliding panel somewhere in one of these rooms, like the one in the hallway - just thought we’d have a look, really.”

“We’ll give you a hand, if you like,” the man said. “I’m Thomas - this is Wilton.”

Doyle suffered their small talk for a while, hoping that maybe they’d decide they needed feeding, or cleaning or the like, so that they could go on with their hunt alone. If there was anything to be found, he wanted to be the one to find it - no, he realised, he wanted _Bodie_ to be the one to find it - and maybe he was regressing to his childhood, but he had a strange feeling that it would be spoiled completely if someone else solved Bodie’s mystery for him.

There was nothing else for it though, talk turned back to the secret panels, and soon they were all ta-tapping around the wooden panels again, Doyle hoping desperately that the tunnel would prove to be in another room entirely.

“You lot _are_ busy - bashing away fit to wake the dead!”

Doyle turned and saw Roland standing in the doorway, smiling at them all. The two artists stopped what they were doing, and looked at him.

“Friend of yours?” Thomas asked, glancing back to Doyle, eyebrow raised.

“Yeah - from Fathoms Brewery,” Doyle said, wanting strangely to distance them from him, “John Roland. 

“Dave Thomas,” Thomas said, reaching out to shake hands, and Wilton did the same. “Is Fathoms based around here, then?”

“No,” Roland shook his head, “Just a guest, like yourselves. I’m interested in the history though, there’s some fascinating families in the area. Came to give the lads a hand.”

“We’ve got to get a move on ourselves,” Wilton said, “Lunch in five minutes Dave!”

“Better not be late again,” Thomas agreed, “Not fair on Clarry - she puts on a good spread.”

“We’d better get on ourselves,” Doyle suggested, with a glance at Bodie. Better to come back on their own sometime, if they could.

“Clarry’s got lunch on?” Bodie said hopefully, so that Doyle could frown at him, and shove him towards the door, Roland ahead of him, as if in play.

There were more visitors around the table in the kitchen by the time they got back to its warmth again, an elderly couple with shocks of snow-white hair, and another only slightly younger man, weathered and tanned, who was introduced to them as their son, and Clarry ushered them all to join the feast, places already set for twelve, more plates ready for anyone else who popped in.

“Gets rid of the turkey so we don’t have to face leftovers for days,” Clarry said practically, but with a grin, when Doyle tried to protest, “Everyone who comes through that door today is expected to do their fair share of helping me get rid of it before I have to make it into the dreaded soup.”

“Turkey soup - _no_!” the kids shouted, Tad a beat or two behind the others, and since Bodie’d slid into a place with no qualms whatsoever, Doyle pulled out a chair to sit beside him, and accepted the plate of cold meat and stuffing as it was going around. Maybe this was how it was done in the country…

“Did you find your secret passage, then?” Sam asked loudly, from the other end of the table, and Bodie shook his head sadly. 

“Nothing,” he said, “But we didn’t get to all the panelled rooms, we’ll try again another time.”

“The secret passage?” the elderly woman said, looking up from her plate, “Who’s been looking for the secret passage? I thought everyone had forgotten about that!”

“Do you know about a secret passage, Mrs Sanders?” Clarry asked in surprise, “Do you know where it is?”

“No, I don’t know where it is - do you, Brian?” Mrs Sanders asked loudly in his ear, but he shook his head slowly from side to side, carried on eating his lunch. “No, the secret’s been lost for many a day. I remember my old grandmother telling me something about it when I was nothing but a girl. I wasn’t very interested in things like that then, I was all for the cows and hens and sheep…”

“Oh, Mrs Sanders, if you remember anything…?” Clarry said, “What was the secret passage?”

“Well, it was supposed to be a hidden way from Firrester Farm to somewhere else - I can’t remember where, I’m sure. Maybe they never told me. It was used in the olden days, when people wanted to hide from enemies.”

So near, but so far, Doyle thought, glancing at Bodie’s face, intent upon the old woman. She really didn’t know anything else, no matter what Clarry asked her, and in the end she changed the subject pointedly, and it seemed they were no more the wiser than when they’d arrived. Obviously it was a passage from the farm to somewhere else - the question was, _where_ , and _what for_? 

“Maybe if we can work out how old the different parts of the farm are,” Bodie was saying to Sam, “Don’t suppose you’ve got any books about it, anything like that?”

“Nothing official,” Clarry answered for him. “There were some old diaries we gave to the local museum - they’d only get ruined if we kept them here - but no one’s written a history or anything that I know of. Nothing that was mentioned in the survey, anyway…”

Bodie insisted on helping Clarry wash up - _always the knight errant_ , Doyle muttered to him, as he passed him plates and cutlery, but he had a feeling it didn’t sound as sarcastic as he’d meant it to. For his part, he saw the Sanders out to their car, across the slippery yard, and watched worriedly as they drove slowly away down the track, at something less than five miles an hour. 

By the time they’d finished with everything - farewells to the people who were there, and greetings to a family who were just arriving, with what seemed like nearly as many children as Clarry had, but was only two - the sky was already growing mid-afternoon-in-December dim, though it seemed to have warmed up a little, and they slipped and slid their way back down to the pub feeling satisfied with their world. Bodie was happy, Doyle thought, watching him chat amiably with Roland about shipwrecks along the coast, and if they could just get back and find that Brooklyn was feeling better…

But Brooklyn was nowhere to be seen when they turned up in the empty bar, just Burt reading a book with his feet up on a table by the fire, a mug of tea in front of him. Roland vanished upstairs, and they sat down to join Burt, who looked at them over the top of his reading glasses.

“Well?” he asked, “Did you find anything, then? Tell us all about it!”

“Nothing to tell,” Bodie said gloomily, “There are three rooms facing east - we only managed to check one of them, but we didn’t find anything.”

“Met the artists,” Doyle added, “Thomas and Wilton. Mostly commercial freelance, over from London.”

“I saw them out this morning,” Burt said, “Roland was with them, down in the village, standing about in an alley by the shop.”

Doyle frowned. “Nah, couldn’t have been them - Roland didn’t know them, they introduced themselves.”

“Well I’m sure I heard Roland call one of them Wilton,” Burt said, frowning, “He must have known them.”

“Couldn’t have been them,” Bodie said again, “Doyle’s right, they introduced themselves in front of us.”

“Look there’s not that many strangers in Downsey at this time of year,” Burt began, but he cut off abruptly, and Doyle turned to see that Roland had come downstairs again, wearing slippers and a friendly expression on his face.

“Shame about the passage,” he said, “Suppose you heard that we didn’t find anything,” he added to Burt, who just sniffed. “At least you met your artists,” he said to Doyle, “Did you manage to set up some lessons? They seemed like decent blokes, anyway - nice to meet them at last, I wonder why they’ve never come down to the pub?”

Doyle nodded, feeling Burt’s eyes on him, and managed to say something vacuous about oil paints and supplies, but it was all he could do not to ask the bloke outright. Why bother to lie, about whether he’d met a couple of blokes who were just here for Christmas? What in the world could be the point?

 

**Chapter Fourteen**

Next morning they were back at work in what Bodie’d taken to calling their schoolroom, slides of other successful Fathoms pubs in front of them for inspiration - and no Brooklyn there beside them. They could hear her clattering about behind the bar, restocking the shelves with their bottles and snacks, talking now and then to Burt in a low voice. It felt wrong, Doyle thought, wishing there was something he could do to make it right again - but if she didn’t want to come in, then she didn’t want to, and he wasn’t sure Roland would have her, even if he pushed the point. They’d ignored each other entirely that morning, even walking past each other in the hall as if there was nothing more than a strange draught blowing past them.

Doyle wanted to smack both their heads together, and perhaps if he’d been back in his old world, and it had been a few years earlier, he might have been tempted to actually try it. As it was…

“Maybe we should have a word with Roland,” Bodie said, when the man had gone out to take a phone call. “There’s no point to all this, it’s a waste of everyone’s time if she stops partway…”

Doyle shook his head. “Yeah, but what would we say? She thinks we’re taking his side because we can’t do anything about the other night - but what can we do?” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to believe her, but the evidence just wasn’t there, their hands were tied as badly as they ever had been in the squad. “And he thinks…” He shrugged. Roland presumably thought she was no more than a frustrated local girl who’d get herself knocked up just as her mother had, and wasn’t worth the time or effort of trying to help.

He tried to concentrate on what they were doing - reviewing and analysing successes and failures - but his mind kept slipping away, to Brooklyn, to Firrester Farm, to Roland himself. Life was supposed to get _simpler_ now that they were retired - he’d be glad to get back to their red spy and her tangles, they were almost straightforward in comparison… and Bodie seemed to be having the same problems, by the sound of things - both of them hesitant to speak, so that Roland accused them of being lacklustre, and only half-jokingly suggested an early night for a change. 

Eventually the clock had moved its sluggish hands far enough that Roland dismissed them to lunch, vanishing off himself to his Weymouth job, leaving them to heave themselves wearily onto stools at the bar.

“That bad, was it?” Burt asked them, from where he was going through his - _their,_ Doyle had to keep reminding himself - stock of local books and postcards, kept behind the bar for the summer tourists. Doyle thought back all those months to pinching a copy of the Coombs local history, and scribbling a drawing of the treasure map in the back - now _that_ had been simple, he thought again. What were they going to do about Brooklyn and Roland?

“Couple of your best, please Burt,” Bodie said in reply, settling his chin in his hands. “Brooklyn not about?”

Burt paused, looked at them. “Joanna was out of eggs, I sent her into the village to find some.”

“Is there not some way we can get her to come back in?” Doyle asked, keeping his voice low even though he knew Roland had left. “It’s daft for her to be missing out just because Roland’s a bit of a prat…”

Burt shook his head, reaching for a pair of glasses, working the pump. “Leave it a few days, mucker - she’s got more going on just now than Roland, to tell you the truth.”

Doyle frowned - as if Roland wasn’t enough. “Anything we can help with?”

“Not unless you fancy your chances at breaking up Tom and Becky - they’re going it hot and heavy back at her place, apparently…”

“Ah… feeling a bit of a gooseberry, is she?”

“That and just as sick as you might feel if it was your mother banging the headboard all night in the room next to yours! And they don’t live somewhere fancy and old with a wing each and walls five foot thick, you know!”

Doyle winced, and he could see Bodie wrinkling his nose. “No, I suppose not…”

“She stayed with one of her mates last night, but she’s practically the last of her crowd not to be living with her feller and at least one baby, so she can’t manage that every night…”

“Can’t she stay here?” Bodie asked, “It’s not as though you’re packed to the gills with paying guests at this time of year.”

“D’you think I didn’t offer?” Burt looked indignant, “She won’t do it - doesn’t want to be that close to Roland in the middle of the night, and I can’t say I blame her.”

“What, you think…?” 

“No - no - nothing like that,” Burt hurried to reassure them, “But would you fancy living that close to someone that much bigger than you, who you’d not long ago taken a swing at with a poker?”

Doyle shook his head. “No, suppose not,” he said again. He looked over at Bodie, met his gaze, and they pondered for a moment or two. “We could ‘ave her over to our place tonight,” he said at last, turning back to Burt, “D’you reckon she’d manage that?”

“Now why would you do that?” Burt asked, pulling himself a half to join them, and it took Doyle a minute to work out that he wasn’t asking on their behalf, he was asking as if he was Brooklyn.

“Invite the Staff to Dinner Night?” Doyle suggested at last. “Isn’t that supposed to be one of the foundations of a successful business - _get to know your employees as people…?_ ”

“I bet Roland’s never mentioned that,” Burt said drily. “But if you’re offering to cook us a meal tonight, then you’re on!”

Doyle thought desperately back to their kitchen cupboards and fridge, trying to remember what they had, what he might make into a creditable meal as a host. “Spag bog?” he said finally, “Fresh French bread - no, _garlic bread_ \- and… winter salad?”

“What the hell’s _winter salad_ when it’s at home?” Bodie asked, looking amused.

“It’s whatever I can find to make that half-bag of rocket stretch to a dinner party,” Doyle told him, “Unless you’re offering to go up to Sainsbury’s for something?”

Bodie was not.

“Right then - you go and ask Joanna, and apologise for the short notice…”

“I’ll say you got your dates wrong, poor old muddled-headed man,” Bodie said with a grin, reaching out to ruffle his curls.

“…and I’ll go and get the grub on.”

It was indeed too short notice for Joanna to be able to come, though she swore blue with apologies that she’d make it next time - Doyle suddenly foresaw a new and regular pub tradition coming from their subterfuge, and one that would be much expanded in the summer - so it was just themselves, Burt and Brooklyn who sat down in the cottage for dinner, a number of rather rushed hours later. In between some rather fraught communications with Jax back at HQ, he’d managed to throw together the spaghetti Bolognese - keep it sweet and simple, he always thought, especially with some decent wine splashed into it, and his own particular mix of flavourings.

“The Constable’s secret blend of herbs and spices?” Bodie suggested, when Burt asked what it was, earning a startled look from Brooklyn which faded into acceptance that she was simply on the outside of some inside joke.

“That your kind of thing is it?” Burt asked hurriedly, so that Doyle narrowed his eyes, trying to work it out. “Bodie said you dabbled with a paintbrush - didn’t take you for an old master, myself!”

“I’m not,” Doyle said, daring Bodie with a look to make more of that than was suitable for Brooklyn’s ears. It hadn’t been Doyle as master, all those years ago. “He just doesn’t understand my vision…” he added, in his best lisping, fey artist’s voice.

“My mum paints,” Brooklyn said, “Or at least she used to. She’d take me by the sea sometimes when I was little, and I’d build sandcastles, and she’d be drawing all this stuff that I thought was weird.”

“I didn’t know that!” Burt exclaimed, helping himself to more garlic bread, “Gave it up, did she?”

“She only did it when no one else was down there, when it was stormy or something - even weirder…”

“I’ll have to ‘ave to a chat with her,” Doyle said comfortably, “Maybe she can recommend some good places to start out.”

“You really going to take it up again?” Bodie asked with interest, their world narrowing for a moment to just the two of them. “You’ve not painted since I met you.”

“As far as you know,” Doyle sniffed, so that Bodie grinned with the mischief of a new mystery to unearth, and Doyle caught Brooklyn watching them with a soft eye. “I’ve made a secret fortune painting pictures of ducks on lavs, I’ll ‘ave you know…”

Burt laughed aloud at that, and Doyle had to admit that it did seem unlikely, but Brooklyn and Bodie were giggling too, so he smiled broadly back and poured them all another large glass of wine, life as it was supposed to be.

Dinner turned into more wine, turned into an agreeable argument between Burt and Bodie about whether to watch _The Godfather_ or _The Matrix_ , which ended when Doyle and Brooklyn put on season four of _Blackadder_ and sat back on the sofa to wait for the title sequence and for the cries of outrage at being gazumped, which fell away entirely by the time Baldrick had struck his triangle, and turned into snorts of laughter over the scratching sounds he made whilst carving his name into a bullet. 

Bodie leaned back against the sofa between Doyle and Brooklyn, and stretched an arm up and around one of Doyle’s legs, hand resting on his knee, and Doyle felt himself freeze for a moment. _It’s just Burt and Brooklyn_ , he made himself think, _and they know anyway_ … If it’d been a woman, one of the birds he’d dated years back, he wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have thought twice, would in fact have been the one with his arm insinuating itself where ever it could, but even when they were living together he and Bodie’d never indulged in this sort of thing unless they were alone. What was Bodie thinking..?

He was thinking that they weren’t in CI5 any more, that no one cared what a couple of old blokes got up to these days, and that Doyle needed to loosen up - _that_ was no doubt what Bodie was thinking… and he did, he did need to loosen up, even if that _was_ an encouraging glance that Brooklyn had just shot sideways at him… It felt as if he was a teenager again, and his best mate was nudging him to get on with it, with the girl he fancied…

He made himself move his hand casually to where Bodie’s hair brushed the cushions of the sofa, just beside his knee, lifted a finger and let it tug gently at a grey lock, feeling all kinds of a fool, sure that Burt and Brooklyn would both be staring at him, that Bodie wouldn’t even notice… On the telly, Baldrick presented his rat in a frying pan, and Burt guffawed as if he’d never seen it before, Brooklyn giggled, and settled down more comfortably into her corner, and Bodie gave his leg a squeeze. 

He was going to kiss Bodie out loud on New Year’s.

 

By the time they’d got through all six episodes, Brooklyn was asleep on the sofa, Bodie had all but nodded off against his leg, and Doyle had yet again to wipe what wasn’t a tear from his eye, after the squad had just gone over the top - he’d just been yawning a bit too widely himself… 

Burt saw himself out - _it’s not as if I don’t know my way, mucker!_ \- and they covered Brooklyn with a spare duvet, then took themselves upstairs, hoping she’d stay if she woke. 

“Is this how it’s gonna be from now on?” Doyle asked, getting undressed, and dropping his clothes into the laundry basket, then padding through to the en suite.

“What, taking in waifs and strays?” Bodie looked up from the sink, catching his eye before Doyle turned away quickly, rinsed his toothbrush and put it away.

“Yeah, that - and you mauling me in public…”

“Oh no,” Bodie objected, “Be fair Raymond - I always mauled you in public! Besides, you mauled me back - blushing, I was!”

“Blushing…” Doyle took his turn at the sink, listening absently to Bodie pissing into the toilet behind him, yawning again as he looked in the mirror. Not too bad for an old un, he supposed, and as long as he kept up the yoga, and the running, and…”

“Too soon?” Bodie whispered suddenly in his ear, and Doyle focussed to see them both reflected there, Bodie’s arms sliding around his stomach, the top of Bodie’s head as he nuzzled Doyle’s neck and kissed him. He wrapped his own arms over Bodie’s, holding them tightly together, holding on, and he took a breath and he shook his head, though he knew Bodie would see that he was biting his lip at the same time, unable to stop himself.

New Year’s Eve, he promised himself.

 

**Chapter Fifteen**

Doyle woke to soft sounds downstairs, the groan of a door he’d not heard before from his bed, the flushing of the downstairs toilet. A thin grey light poked its desultory way past the edge of the curtains, and his watch said eight o’clock - _bloody hell_ , they’d slept in…

He managed to pull on his clothes and catch Brooklyn just as she was about to slip out the kitchen door.

“Coffee?” he asked, voice still scratchy with sleep. “Go on - make a change for me to ‘ave someone to talk to at breakfast, Bodie can barely grunt before ten in the morning.”

Brooklyn smiled, despite herself, Doyle thought, because she looked morning-guest shy, and he supposed it wasn’t every day that you woke up in your bosses’ house of a morning. But she nodded, and turned back into the room, standing by the kitchen table.

“Burt told you about mum and Tom, didn’t he?” she said. “I didn’t want him to.”

Doyle wrinkled his nose, filling the kettle. “Our fault,” he said, “We’re good at making people talk to us…” _Damn_ , why had he said that? He was getting slow to start in the morning himself, she’d never tell him anything now…

But Brooklyn just smiled. “I noticed that. It’s okay - it’s not exactly a village secret.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that. “Does she do this often?” he asked, bustling about with the cafetière, and putting on some toast so that she didn’t have to look at him, so that it was easier to say things she might not otherwise want to say.

“What, sleep around?”

 _Christ!_ “No, I didn’t mean…”

“Oh, it’s okay,” she said again, “Its what everyone else thinks - but she doesn’t, actually. Now and then she has, but everyone deserves to find a boyfriend, don’t they?”

He couldn’t argue with that. “You reckon Tom’s something special, then?”

“Yeah, I think he might be,” she said, surprising him. She nodded to milk, shook her head to sugar, and took the mug of coffee he handed her. “They’ve been seeing each other almost since he got here last summer.”

“That long?”

She smiled. “She can keep a secret when she wants to, it’s just than when she doesn’t…”

It’s all a bit obvious,” he finished. “You know, you can stay at the pub if you want to, pick any room you like until summer. It’s not unusual for accommodation to come as part of a staff package.”

“It would be for me,” she said, “Since I only live down there. Besides…” She trailed off suddenly, looked awkward.

“Yeah,” he said, “I know. Look - I believe what you said you saw the other night, but without evidence… What d’you think he was after?”

Brooklyn shrugged. “I don’t know - I didn’t think Burt kept anything special in the safe, it’s just always been there. He mostly keeps stuff in the banks - he’s got one of those Swiss account things that they always put on the telly, the ones the big crooks have.”

A Swiss bank account, after all this time? _Once a mercenary, always a mercenary_ , he thought for a moment, before pulling himself up. That would mean Bodie too, if it was true…

“He’ll only be here for another few weeks,” he said, “We’d like you to come back to the tutorials - we really want you to stay, if you want to stay, and once Burt’s gone you’ll be the person who knows this place best.”

“Me?”

“Who else?” he asked. “You’ve worked here a few years now, maybe not always full-time, but you’ve always been here - that’s longer than the rest of the staff, isn’t it?”

“Cal’s been here forever, and Joanna in the winter…”

“But that’s just cooking,” Doyle said, maligning their possible expertise without a glimmer of conscience, “You’re the one who’s out on the shop floor, so to speak. And you know Burt, what he’d like and what he wouldn’t - and how he and Sal used to do it.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Do you want to stay? You could go off to college, you know, especially if your mum’s getting herself settled.”

But Brooklyn was nodding again, though she clutched the mug between both her hands as if to ward away life. “I do want to stay - this is home, you know? I know they say _she’s just a local girl_ , but there’s nothing wrong with staying where you came from.”

Doyle couldn’t imagine it. “I know… I suppose it’s just that most people these days don’t.”

“Most people can’t afford to,” she said wisely, “I couldn’t afford to move out but still live in Downsey even if I wanted to, unless maybe I got a caravan up at Tony’s field… But I don’t care about buying a house either - maybe I’ll get a bus one day, like Tom. If he moved in with mum, he might let me have his…”

“In this weather? You must be mad!” He smiled at her, tipping his head to the window. It had been slowly warming up again, the snow melting in patches during the day and freezing again at night, and tiny icicles had formed on the edge of their roof, just now beginning to drip again.

“No, he’s got it really cosy, with a fire inside and everything - you should go and visit him, he’s actually okay, you know.”

Doyle nodded. “He seemed alright last night - I hope it works out for them.”

“Me too. Thanks for letting me stay last night.” Brooklyn looked up at him through her lashes. “I’ll go and talk to mum before work - see if we can figure something out… And thanks for listening. I’ll try and come back to the lessons tomorrow, if you really want me to…”

“We do!” Doyle beamed, “Good - it’ll be worth it, you’ll see.”

Footsteps sounded above them, Bodie getting up at last, and Brooklyn scraped her chair back quickly and took her dishes to the sink. “Thanks for breakfast - I’ll see you later, then…”

“See you,” Doyle smiled, watching through the window as she slipped down the garden and through the wall to the pub. He felt like dancing in triumph, so when Bodie appeared at the bottom of the steps he did, grabbing him, and waltzing him around the table, Bodie following automatically, though he detached himself when they got as far as the sink, to fill the kettle and put it on.

“I take it that went well then?” he asked, looking amused as he always did, when Doyle did something unexpected, as if his cat had just learned how to sing.

“She’s going to come back in with us tomorrow,” Doyle said smugly, “And she’s gone to talk to her mum before work.”

“You little silver tongue, you… You’d better see if you can convince Roland not to give me detention after school tonight an’ all.”

“Eh?”

“It’s nearly nine o’clock Raymond, you’re going to be late - and I’m going to be _very_ late…” Bodie poured water over a teabag, noticeably unconcerned.

“Bollocks… Look, hurry up, alright!”

“Yes mum! Don’t forget your homework…” 

Doyle shot him a look, and opened the kitchen door wide to let the cold air in - maybe it’d get the bugger moving a bit faster - then he grinned broadly, even the prospect of a morning in the schoolroom unable to dampen his spirits, and followed in Brooklyn’s footsteps.

He was late, Roland sitting pointedly at their round table, files and papers out in front of him. 

“Everything alright?” he asked, frowning at Doyle’s whirlwind arrival. “Bodie not well?”

“He’s fine - we overslept,” he added, despite himself. The habit of excusing himself to a superior wasn’t easily lost, he’d discovered, and Cowley’s approbation had required more frequent explanations than any other, so that it still came automatically. 

But Roland wasn’t their superior in anything except knowledge of the trade, he reminded himself. “He’ll be along in a bit.”

“I suppose you can start reading without him,” Roland said unenthusiastically. “It’s your money, after all. I take it Brooklyn’s given up,” he added, a knowing tone in his voice, and a condescending look on his face, so that Doyle wanted to reach out and wipe it off with his fist. 

“She’ll be in again tomorrow,” he said, enjoying the fact that he could so firmly contradict the man, “She ‘ad some things to take care of.”

“I see…”

A door slammed somewhere in the building, the back kitchen door, maybe, and they both looked up, the sound reverberating around them strangely, footsteps approaching almost at a run. Bodie burst into the room, looking upset and worried, an A4 notebook in one hand.

“Ray..?”

Doyle stared at the notebook, his own, left under the coffee table with his laptop yesterday, when he’d finally abandoned Jax to the problem of Anna Chapman, and gone to put the finishing touches to their dinner.

Pages had clearly been torn from it.

Bodie held it out, and he took it without speaking, ignoring Roland’s questioning looks. 

“Three,” he said, flipping through the pages. “And I take it we didn’t run out of toilet paper.”

“All stocked up on Andrex,” Bodie said grimly.

“Look - what’s wrong?” Roland said at last, “Is something missing?”

It was too late to pretend there wasn’t, he’d caught their sense of urgency, their anger. Why the _hell_ had he written anything down at all? Doyle ran fingers through his hair in frustration, let out a heavy breath. Because he’d never really thought about it before, because he’d always been kept secure, their property safe, in the bosom of CI5. 

“Some notes, from my old work,” he hedged. “Important notes that no one had any business taking.”

“But - who could possibly have been in your cottage?” Roland asked reasonably, “You keep it locked, don’t you?”

“How do you know that?” Bodie asked, looking at him, eyes hard so that Roland practically took a step back.

“I’ve seen you do it,” he said, “Walking up the hill - you can see right down into your place.”

He wouldn’t be able to in summertime, Doyle thought wearily, but right now the trees were bare of their leaves, and someone close enough, near enough to the pub on the public footpath across the common, could probably see their house plainly enough.

“Besides,” Roland added, “Doesn’t everyone lock up, these days?”

Everyone did, Doyle nodded - and they did too. Which meant that someone must either have broken in and got past Brooklyn, asleep on the sofa, to steal the notes, or…

Bodie looked sharply at him, on the same wavelength, the same frustrating, worrying wavelength. It couldn’t be, surely…

“So who could have got in there to steal something?” Roland asked, “Are you sure you didn’t just misplace them?”

Doyle gritted his teeth. “I’m sure.”

“Well then - who’s been in your cottage? Someone with a delivery, maybe?” He looked from one to the other of them. “Why do I get the feeling that you know who it was? Hadn’t you better go and sort them out, in that case?”

They _didn’t_ know who it was, Doyle thought determinedly, though a glance at Bodie made it clear that he wasn’t so sure, but what they did need to do was find Brooklyn, and see what she knew about it.

“Does Burt know?” Roland continued, apparently determined to get to the bottom of things. He strode to the door, and had called out before they realised what he was doing. “Burt - have you got a moment?”

“It’s nothing to do with Burt,” Bodie said darkly, “And it’s not got much to do with you, either.”

“It has when it’s disrupting our sessions - you might be paying for this, but the brewery keeps an eye on me, you know!”

Footsteps thudded outside, before they could say anything else, down the stairs, along the hallway, and then Burt peered in, face flushed under his shock of beard, as if he’d been out in the cold. “Someone bellow?”

“The lads have lost some papers,” Roland declared peremptorily, “What do you know about it?”

Bodie was shaking his head even before Burt looked at them incredulously. “You saying I took something from your place last night?”

“Of course not…” Doyle began, but Burt cut him off.

“And you know full well Brooklyn wouldn’t do that either - what you playing about, Bodie?”

“Brooklyn was there!” Roland exclaimed, I-told-you-so clear in his voice.

“ _For fuck’s…_ ” Doyle began, patience gone, managed to stop himself and take a deep breath. “No one’s accusing anyone of taking anything!” He shot a hard look at Roland, who quailed slightly. “If you want a job with MI5, you get yourself down there - but you’re right, we’re paying you this month, and if you don’t shut up and stop interfering right now, we won’t be.” Not a good start, and he knew it, but… “Burt - at some point last night some papers were taken from my notebook, old work papers. If it wasn’t you and it wasn’t Brooklyn - can you think of any way someone might have been able to get into our place?”

But Burt, who knew full well that Brooklyn had slept the entire night at their place, could only grimace at them, and shake his head. “Look, maybe she just borrowed the notebook, wrote on the back of your pages,” he said, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice. “She was writing down those old recipes wasn’t she…?”

“Well,” Roland said stiffly, snapping his books closed, and gathering up the folders, “I think it’s clear we won’t get anything else done this morning. Let me know if you want to continue tomorrow.” He didn’t meet their eyes again, but kept his head down, and left the room.

Doyle signed, frowning at the ceiling for a moment. “I suppose I’ll ‘ave to apologise to _him_ now.”

“He probably thought he was helping,” Bodie said, though he narrowed his eyes as he said it. “In the meantime…”

“…in the meantime we’d better go and find Brooklyn ourselves,” Doyle interrupted, ignoring the glare Burt shot his way. “Come on…”

 

**Chapter Sixteen**

They left Burt to wait for her at the pub, threw on their coats and crept out of the front door quietly, hurrying across the carpark and onto the road in case Roland looked out his window and decided to join them. Brooklyn lived in one of the terraced cottages along the seafront in the village - if they were lucky they’d meet her on her way back to start work.

“I don’t like this,” Doyle said, as they strode purposefully down the hill towards Downsey. “Someone in our cottage, who knew exactly what they were looking for?”

Bodie glanced at him. “How d’you know they did?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could have been a lucky snatch - they went for the laptop, saw your notes instead. What did you have written down?”

“Nothing anyone else would have recognised.” Doyle shook his head. Taking notes when they had to was one thing, but they’d long worked out their own kind of code, one that had evolved so that they knew what they were looking at, but no one else would easily be able to. “Nah - it has to be someone who knew what they were looking for. If it was regular chancers, why wouldn’t they just take the whole notebook? Or the bloody laptop?”

“Someone who knows who we are,” Bodie agreed, “And that we’re still working on something.”

They paused for a moment, stepping to one side to let a car go past up the hill, branches and twigs from the hedge pressing into their backs. Doyle shook his shoulders irritably, looked out over the bare branches to where a slate grey sea met the clouded sky.

“Which means someone followed us down,” he said grimly, “There’s no other way. Which also means…”

“…another leaky tap,” Bodie finished. “The Minister?”

Now there was a nasty thought. “Or one of his minions, keeping his own close eye on his nibs.”

“We need to report it…”

“Yeah, but who to?” Doyle scuffed the path with a boot-clad foot, unearthed a stone and kicked it along the road. “If we don’t know where the drip’s coming from…”

“Jax,” Bodie said, certainly. “We know it’s not coming from him, don’t we?” And Jax was as canny as they’d both learned to be, for much the same reasons, but somehow with a lot more tact - Doyle just hoped it would be enough to save him from the cull until the very end. 

“Use his private line,” Bodie added, “Maybe get him to send a couple of lads he trusts down for a weekend.”

“Won’t that be a bit obvious?”

“Not if they’re our lot - Benny maybe, or Lucas and McCabe.”

Doyle nodded briefly. “Yeah… So much for retirement.”

“Ah, you didn’t want to go anyway - far more exciting this, innit?” Bodie nudged him, and there was a light in his eyes.

“Better than doing lessons with Roland,” Doyle said, and that was the only brightness he could think of in the whole mess.

“Bet you were a terror in the classroom,” Bodie said, grinning, and setting them off walking again. “Can see it now, shirt untucked, never a tie…”

“I ‘ated wearing a tie,” Doyle agreed. He only wore one now if he couldn’t help it. “Bet you weren’t much better!”

“I was a good boy, me!” Bodie protested, “Looked very dapper in me short trousers and knee-high socks…”

Despite everything, Doyle grinned at that. He could see a young Bodie, turned out perfectly, charming the birds out of the trees. “Those were the days,” he said, “Can you imagine kids now putting up with what we had to wear?”

“Different times,” Bodie said, “You remember the flares when we started in CI5?”

“Was never that end of your trousers I was looking at,” Doyle leered cheerfully, making the effort, and then they were entering Downsey properly, houses on either side of the road, and people on the pavement, not many, older men and women with trolleys, on their way to the village shop for their morning bread and paper, or finally escaping for their daily walk after being cooped up with family over the Christmas weekend.

They stopped in the shop for the papers, one each of everything that was left, in case some small-time journalist had picked up something that their trained agents couldn’t about their spy, then carried on down to the harbour, where the tide was in and high, boats bobbing around on the water, their lines and masts ringing.

“Sea music,” Bodie said absently, so that Doyle looked at him as he gazed, the same agent that had shot and killed a hundred men or more. He caught Doyle’s stare, perhaps realised what he’d said. “What?” he asked, “A bloke can’t think out loud anymore?”

“You’re getting old - thinking out loud,” Doyle teased, but he didn’t want to make fun, not really. “Ever thought of writing a book?” he asked, “All that poetry in your head…”

Bodie snorted. “I’d rather get out there,” he said, “Can you see me at a laptop all day?”

“I ‘ave - you’re a danger to any agent you come across when that happens…” Were. _Used to be_ a danger.

“Shame we can’t get out to the island, be great on a day like this!”

Doyle eyed the white caps out past their relatively calm harbour, some rising up as proper waves, and driving themselves towards Downsey, smashing on the sea wall, or the beach, or the rocks further around - the sea around Kirrin Island was notoriously treacherous at this time of year, even on a fine day. “You are joking - we’d freeze to death if we made it across at all in Burt’s tub! And we’re just a bit busy right now, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Dramatic though,” Bodie said unrepentantly. “All those wrecks stirring around on the bottom of the sea - they could be coming up all over the back of the island, and we’d never know…”

Doyle smiled grimly, thought back to their own shipwreck, the hulking black mass of her rising through the storm. “Tell you what - you get yourself out there mate, give me a call and tell me all about it. I’ll be back at the pub trying to work out who stole our bloody notes…”

“What, go out without me cabin boy?” Bodie looked appalled, “I couldn’t possibly - who’d sort out me jolly roger… Morning Mr Sanders, Mrs Sanders…”

Doyle managed to smile politely as they passed the old couple who’d emerged from their parked car at just the right moment. That’d teach Bodie…

“Good morning…” Mrs Sanders struggled for a moment over their names, decided to give up. “Did you ever find your secret passage?”

Doyle’s breath caught, and he gave a half-laugh, tried to turn it into a cough, and ended up choking, so that Bodie slapped him unhelpfully on the back, apologising as he did it.

“Bad chest - sea air’s good for him, though… We’ve not been back to look yet - we’ll let you know if we come across anything interesting!” He gave Doyle another heavy-handed pat on the back to get him moving again, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t know what’s wrong with you,” he said innocently, knowing Doyle couldn’t retaliate whilst the couple were still watching.

Brooklyn’s house was second from the end of the terrace, but when they finally got there the windows were dark, and no one answered the bell.

“Missed her,” Doyle said, “Bugger.”

“She might not have come here at all - maybe they were up at Tom’s caravan all along,” Bodie said, sniffing and looking around.

“Bus,” Doyle said absently, “It’s a London bus. What about Tom?”

“What about Tom, about Tom?”

Doyle frowned, hand raised to his mouth, running his thumb over his lips, not seeing what he was staring at. “He got here this summer.”

“So?”

“So - he could be anyone, could have been a journalist saw the reports before the d-notice hit, recognised our pictures… it wasn’t a secret that we made Burt an offer.”

Bodie looked at his sceptically. “He’d’ve had to have his skates on - followed Dinky and the lads out, took our photos, found out who we were, heard we were buying the place… how’d he even know back then that we’d move down here? Or when? _We_ didn’t know then!”

“Playing a long game, maybe,” Doyle suggested. “Yeah alright, but - is it a longer shot than thinking Brooklyn took the papers?”

“Yeah, well... Maybe Burt’s right, maybe she just borrowed something to write on, tore out the pages without realising…”

Doyle shook his head at that. It’d be easy, the best answer all round, but he knew it wasn’t true, the wrongness of it idea nagging all the way through him. There’d only been three pages, Brooklyn couldn’t have torn out that many exactly without knowing what was on them.

They walked back to the main road, started the climb back up to _The Half Moon_ in silence. It was a bit mad to accuse Tom of subterfuge and theft just because he happened to be new to Downsey, and unfair besides - Doyle remembered the suspicion attached to being a new boy, even all these years later, dragged from one place to the next. It made you defensive, he remembered, they’d need to take it carefully if they did question him. And what proof could they ever have, the papers would surely be long gone by now anyway… But it simply _couldn’t_ be Brooklyn.

“Oi!” Bodie grabbed his arm suddenly, “There she is!”

Brooklyn was coming towards them not on the road, but along one of the footpaths that led down to the cliffs. She’d tied her hair back, and she looked windswept and full of energy, striding through the grass, watching her footing past patches of still unmelted snow.

“Brooklyn!” Bodie yelled, so that she looked up and smiled at them. “Are you coming up to the _Moon_?”

“Hiya,” she said, climbing over the styal in the stone wall, and joining them on the road. “We’ve been for a walk.” She looked at Doyle, caught his eye. “Me and mum and Tom…”

Doyle smiled, as much as he could. “That’s good - I’m glad. Look, we’ve got something to ask you…”

“What’s the matter?” she asked, catching their mood, suddenly alarmed, “Has something happened?” 

“Someone’s taken…” Doyle paused, started again. “Sometime last night, someone took some pages out of a book I had from work - our old work. They were important…”

“But - we were at your place all… oh.” She turned and started walking up the hill, leaving them to follow in her wake.

“No…” They hurried to catch her up, and Doyle reached out, caught her shoulder and stopped her. “Just… listen a minute!”

“As if I’d do a thing like that!” Brooklyn said, shaking him off, and there were tears in her eyes. “Why would you think it was me?”

“That’s what we’re trying to tell you - we _don’t_ think it was you, but it was someone, and you were there. Did you notice anything odd last night?”

“No…” she shook her head. “We were all there - we had dinner and watched _Blackadder_ , and I fell asleep, and Burt must have gone home…”

“Did we lock the door after Burt left?” Bodie asked suddenly, and Doyle looked at him, held his gaze for a moment. No - they hadn’t. Fuck…

“Brooklyn,” he turned to her, “Did you maybe _hear_ something last night? Could someone have come into the cottage?”

“I sleep really heavily,” she said, looking distressed, “And I was so tired last night… but it wasn’t me, I swear it wasn’t!”

“It’s alright,” Doyle said soothingly, “We know…”

“Well we don’t _know_ ,” Bodie said, so that Doyle looked at him in surprise, and Brooklyn with an almost frightened look on her face. “And Roland for one is convinced it _is_ you - so we need answers.”

“It was probably _him_ ,” Brooklyn said, eyes dark with anger. “You know he was in Burt’s office the other night, and he wasn’t looking for his ring, I know he wasn’t!”

Doyle shook his head. Much as he’d love to think it of the man, there was no way it could be Roland - it would be too much of a coincidence if the bloke they’d hired from the brewery turned out to be a spy as well, it could be possible. “Whatever he was up to the other night, I don’t think it was anything to do with this,” he said.

“Well I’m not afraid,” Brooklyn said, head high in the air, a dolly-girl trying to be headstrong, thought Doyle, all blue eye shadow and pouting pink lips. “You can ask me anything you want - but I want Burt there too,” she added, “He _knows_ I wouldn’t do anything like that!”

She marched up the road, and they followed behind her, all the way up the driveway, through the carpark and into the bar. There was no sign of Burt, and Brooklyn carried on down the hall to his office, knocking on the door that stood ajar, pushing it open when there was no answer.

“Burt…?”

“We’ll wait here for him,” Doyle began, just as there was a shout from the barroom. 

“Burt? That you?” It was Roland, silence perhaps whilst he listened a moment, and then footsteps towards the hallway.

“Oh hell,” Bodie muttered, and with a glance at Doyle, who nodded, he slipped into the corridor. “Just me, John - you looking for him too? He’s never around when you want him, is he?”

“Bodie - no, and I wanted to talk to him about the brewery. Marshall…” Their voices faded again, past the bar, Doyle thought, probably into the breakfast room - Bodie’d make them tea maybe, keep Roland safely out of the way until he’d had a chance to talk to Brooklyn. _If_ Burt would get here without his usual noise and bluster…

He took a breath, caught Brooklyn’s eye, and gestured to the chairs. “Let’s sit down,” he said in a low voice, “Have a think for a few minutes. If you can think of anything that might have disturbed you that night, it could be a clue to what happened.”

Brooklyn nodded, sitting in one of the armchairs in front of Burt’s desk, one legged tucked up under her, one finger twirling at the hair from her pony tail, round and round…

Doyle sat down opposite her, gazing blankly at the mantelpiece behind Burt’s desk, where a clock ticked away the time. Only just after half ten - it felt like they’d lived a whole day already… He gazed at the panelled overmantel, counting the wooden squares absently. Eight. Now where had he heard of eight…? On the cloth of course, where it had seemed so important, so exciting just a few days ago. Shame there hadn’t been eight panels in a wooden overmantel at the farmhouse.

He glanced out the window, not really seeing, wondering idly if it faced east. There was no sun today, the clouds low and heavy again, promising still more snow, but Burt’s office was next to the room where they had their lessons, and _that_ faced east, so it must do. There was a coincidence, he thought, and then he had to know - _had_ to know - whether it had a stone floor as well. Abruptly he stood, went to the wall, and pulled up the edge of the carpet - the floor underneath was made of large flat stones.

Burt’s study had a stone floor, it faced east, and eight wooden panels…

He sat down again, aware of Brooklyn’s curious eyes on him, and stared at the panels, trying to remember which one of them on the roll of cloth was marked with a cross - except that it wasn’t a room in _The Half Moon_ that they were looking for, it was in Firrester Farm that the secret passage began. But…

…suppose it _was_ in _The Half Moon_! The directions had been found in the farmhouse, but that didn’t mean the secret passage had to start there at all - it could be anywhere, when you got down to it.

He’d just got up to try tapping around the panels in case one did slide back when there was a noise at the door, and Burt came in, stopping abruptly when he saw them sitting there so quietly.

“Problems?” he asked them, his own voice low and serious.

Doyle shook his head. “No more than we had before. We forgot to lock up after you left last night.”

Burt looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“I know - I know! But we did, and…”

“…and our Brooklyn here sleeps like the dead,” Burt interrupted, looking at her with a sympathetic eye. “You fell asleep here one night when you were a nipper, and your mum was… well anyway. There was a big party that night - it was midsummer or something, I think - and the jukebox was playing, and everyone was shouting - you slept through it as if it was a lullaby…”

Brooklyn looked rueful, a tinge of pink to her face. “I know, I always did. Sal used to say she thought I was dead sometimes, but I never was.”

“Brook - tell me on your honour you don’t know anything about the missing pages.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” Brooklyn said, looking Burt straight in the eyes. Her eyes shone very blue and clear as she gazed at him, and even if he hadn’t thought so before Doyle would have been convinced she was telling the truth. But what the hell had happened to the pages?

**Chapter Seventeen**

“I’ve been thinking,” Burt said, “Isn’t it odd that whoever it was tore the pages out rather than just take the whole notebook? You might have thought you’d lost it, they’d have had more time to get away whilst you were looking…”

“Don’t need more time, do they?” Doyle said morosely, “We’ve got no clue who did it to start with. Suppose they thought I might not pick it up again for days. Work the same way, wouldn’t it?”

The door opened behind them, and Doyle whipped around, but it was only Bodie.

“He’s going over to Weymouth early, to miss the worst of the snow,” he said, “It’s started up again.”

Doyle looked out the window in surprise. Tiny flakes had started to fall again, and already the ground was freshly dusted with white.

“He’s not been listening to the forecast, then,” Burt said, “It’s going to get worse today before it gets better - he might not get back again.”

“Well at least we don’t have to worry about him snooping around,” Brooklyn said, “And stealing more of your things!”

“It can’t have been…” Doyle began, but a shout from the barroom interrupted him.

“Damn - customers,” Burt said, turning to go, but Brooklyn stood up quickly.

“It’s alright, I’ll go. You probably want to talk…” She ducked past Bodie and out the door, and Doyle could hear her call out a greeting, and then chatting, to the lads from the farms, by the sound of it.

Doyle sighed, and caught Bodie’s eye, and Bodie came further into the room to stand beside him, shoulders brushing.

“When did you see the book last?” Burt asked, perching himself on a corner of his desk.

“I finished talking with Ja… HQ, put it under the table with the laptop, went to finish getting dinner ready in the kitchen,” Doyle said certainly. “But I was in and out of the living room all afternoon, and even when I wasn’t the door wasn’t shut. I would have seen someone come in.”

“And I came in around four-thirty,” Bodie remembered, “And then Burt and Brooklyn about six. Who was on the bar?”

“Lionel,” Burt said, “From up South Farm.”

“He might have seen a stranger hanging around,” Doyle suggested, but he wasn’t one of the lads there in the bar with Brooklyn this morning.

“Doesn’t drink much,” Burt said, unsurprised. “Hard worker - he’s probably out there somewhere, even in this.”

“So last night, when we went to bed - what, around two? - we’re ninety-nine per cent certain the notes were still there,” Bodie continued. “Brooklyn slept practically on top of them all night, but the door was unlocked. You got up around eight…”

“…she was already up,” Doyle interrupted, for the sake of accuracy, “I think that was what woke me.” He felt tired enough now, he could have done with a few more hours sleep. “We were talking in the kitchen - but the door was open again, no one came in.”

“I came down around nine, and you were on your own - you left a few minutes later. I went to check emails - oh yeah, and the internet’s down again! - and that was when I saw the notebook.”

“How did you know the pages were gone?” Burt asked thoughtfully. “For all you know Ray could have torn them out himself.”

Bodie shook his head. “We don’t do that, we cross off.” He rolled his eyes. “Security reasons. Couldn’t have been Doyle. Okay, so they were still there at… what, about five thirty?”

Doyle nodded. “So they were torn out of the book sometime between five thirty and eight.”

“I still don’t know why they wouldn’t just take the whole book,” Burt said again. “Must have taken a minute or two to tear the pages out - more risky.”

“Thought we might not notice them gone,” Doyle said again, gloomily, but Bodie was staring at Burt, eyes gleaming.

“They knew what they wanted,” he said. “For all they knew, that whole notebook could have been full of useful stuff - but they only wanted what we were working on now.” 

“Red! Doyle said. “And we only knew ourselves we’d be working on that…”

“…Wednesday,” Bodie finished. “Thursday, really.” They’d told the Minister what they wanted on Thursday, but even then it hadn’t been okayed until Friday morning, everything on the last minute as usual - though even Doyle admitted they couldn’t complain about that themselves, this time.

“This is getting us nowhere,” he said with a grimace. There’s nothing that matches Red with this place except us, and we didn’t take the…”

“Can’t get a taxi!” The door behind them pushed open again, and Roland stamped in, brushing snow from his coat and waving a mobile phone. “I called not ten minutes ago, and now they tell me they’re not coming after all! What kind of a place…?” He paused, seemed to realise that the quiet around him wasn’t an ordinary quiet, and took a deep breath. “Yes, well - I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. “I’m just a bit frustrated, all these interruptions to the schedule. You’re only booked in for a month, so we don’t have much time.” He tilted his chin up. “I take pride in my work, and I want this place to do well if it’s got my name to it.” He sniffed, started to speak again, and then sneezed. “On top of it all I’m getting a cold.”

Doyle stared hard at him, didn’t break the silence of the other two. If only Roland would fuck off they could… well, he didn’t know what they could do, but he’d like a chance to do it.

“Might I suggest we reschedule our session for this afternoon?” Roland carried on. “No point losing more time than we have to.”

“Alright,” Bodie said, before Doyle could agree or disagree. “You’re right, no point wasting time. Let’s just get on with it.”

Roland nodded, glanced once around the room, and then took himself off again. 

Was it Doyle’s imagination, or had that gaze lingered on the picture hiding Burt’s safe? Surely not… Roland had been found in Burt’s study, snooping around. Roland had been seen at their cottage, snooping around. And Roland had accused the person who had found him doing both those things, of being the thief. Surely it was too obvious, surely it couldn’t possibly be Roland, because it was just too obvious that it must be? 

“Look - let’s have a cup of tea,” Burt was saying, clapping Bodie’s shoulder, and ushering him out the door. “Everything’ll be clearer after a cup of tea, mucker, you’ll see.”

It was only when he looked back to take his own last glance at the room that Doyle realised he hadn’t told the others about the eight wood panels and the stone floor, and by then it was too late, the bar room host to half a dozen locals who were moaning about the weather, and, with wide grins, about the traumas of being snowed in at a pub.

**Chapter Eighteen**

Doyle found himself fidgeting all afternoon, something he thought he’d got over years ago, when he’d taught himself to work at a desk all day, up and down to the bar over lunch to help Brooklyn, much to Burt’s amusement, and then up and down from their table in the schoolroom to consult this file and that folder whilst they working. He was all but jiggling his foot and tapping his fingers, and he knew it. Bodie knew it too.

“Look on the bright side,” Bodie managed to whisper to him across the table in the study, when Roland had nipped out to the toilet, “Whoever’s got the pages is as snowed in as we are - they can’t be far away.”

“They could have got them out first thing this morning,” he said. “Would you hang around here with a pocketful of government secrets?”

“I wouldn’t have a pocketful of government secrets. I would have taken pictures and used a dropbox.”

“Oh great - you’re real comfort, you are!”

“That’s what I mean - it’s either too late or it’s al….”

“So!” Roland exclaimed heartily, clapping his hands together as he came back in. “Have you finished your scenarios yet?”

The afternoon wore on, the snow fell, and Doyle’s temper wasn’t improved by Roland spluttering all over them, gradually filling the rubbish bin with his tissues, but refusing to leave them along to get on with it. “Don’t want to waste time,” the man kept saying, in between sneezes, “Might as well get on with it since I can’t get to Weymouth!”

They finished at last, and wandered through to the bar again, empty now but for Burt and Brooklyn, and a single young man in a suit, sitting close to the fire with his pint, apparently engrossed in an old copy of _The Visitor_. Doyle felt worn out by trying not to show his nerves more than he already had done. The more he thought about it, the less he trusted Roland, and the more sure he was that he must have the papers somewhere around the place. Bodie was right - if it was him then he hadn’t been able to get out with them, must still have them hidden somewhere. He’d get Bodie to distract him, search his room…

“Alright, mucker?” Burt called, gesturing with an empty bottle to the other end of the bar, where Brooklyn was rotating stock in the fridge. “I’ve been telling Brook she needs to stay here tonight - I don’t want her out in this lot. Bad as I’ve ever seen it, out there.”

“He’s right,” Bodie said, leaning over the bar. “Stay with us again if you like. You looked alright on the sofa last night!”

“Mum’ll be expecting me tonight,” Brooklyn began weakly. “I haven’t got a signal.”

“Text her anyway and it’ll go through when you do,” Doyle said firmly, letting himself be distracted. “Burt’s right - it’s dark and cold and dangerous out there, and I don’t want you to try it.”

Brooklyn glanced reproachfully up at him from under her eyelashes, but she didn’t say anything, just grimaced and carried on reordering the bottles. 

“You here for dinner tonight?” Burt began. “I sent Joanna home at lunch time, but I’ve got half a dozen chops going to waste…”

Doyle froze suddenly, his body stopping absolutely still for the first time since Bodie’d told him about the missing notes. Roland had just vanished through the pub door, clad in coat and boots, scarf wrapped firmly around his neck, and hands deep in his pockets.

“Fuck!”

“Doyle…?” Bodie turned around, followed his gaze to the entrance, then looked back at Doyle, frowning. “What’s happening?”

Heedless of the others, Doyle stepped in close to him, one hand to his waist to hold him in place, and leaned in to his ear. “Roland - he’s got the papers and he’s just gone out. I’m going after him…” He made to step away, but Bodie grabbed his arm, holding tight. 

“You can’t go out in that lot…” he began, and Doyle pulled away, glaring at him.

“Of course I bloody can - and you get upstairs and search his room before we get back. If he’s not taking them to a drop then the papers’ll be up there somewhere…”

“I’m not…” Bodie began, but Doyle was halfway to the door. Bodie would do it, and in the meantime he needed to know where Roland was going. It couldn’t be far in this weather, surely…

“Take a coat!” Bodie called from behind him, and Doyle waved an arm, grabbed at a white jacket hanging by the entrance, and pulled the inner door to behind him. He was sure - sure - that Roland had taken the papers and that he was meeting someone to get rid of them, nothing else made any sense. Snow was still falling, but not fast enough that it hid Roland’s deep footsteps across the empty car park towards the lane. He’d been wearing Wellington boots, and the marks showed well in the six inch deep snow.

Doyle followed as quickly as he could. The coat he’d taken was of course Brooklyn’s, and wouldn’t go nearly around him, but he pulled the hood on, and used the arms to tie it in place like a cape on the basis that poor camouflage was worse than none at all. The sky was low and leaden and night-time endless, though it was barely six o clock, and there was clearly a lot more snow to come. He hurried on after Roland, eyes peeled, although there was no sign of him except the footprints.

Down the lane and onto the path towards the common, and Doyle stumbled on, eyes glued to the trail - then suddenly there were voices ahead of him, and he stopped. There was a great gorse bush to his right, thick with snow, and the voices were coming from behind it. Roland, talking in low tones, and another man - two other men. Who the hell could it be?

He crept closer to the bush. There was something of a hollow space from this side, and he thought that if he could just get inside, never mind the thorns, he might be able to see… and then he was surrounded by branches, and there was Roland talking to Thomas and Wilton, the two artists at Clarry’s bed and breakfast. The final part of the jigsaw slotted into place - Burt had sworn blind the three men knew each other, and they hadn’t believed him…

As Doyle watched, Roland pulled a doubled-up sheaf of papers from his pocket, handing them to Thomas. He could hear only snatches of what was being said, wind blowing the words away from him, _tomorrow_ , and _damn snow_ , and maybe a name - _Ambridge_ … no, _Cambridge_ , of course…

Thomas put the papers into his own pocket, Wilton clapped Roland on the back, and then the three men parted again, Thomas and Wilton on the path back to Firrester Farm, Roland the way he’d come, past Doyle’s gorse bush. Doyle crouched low, hoping Roland wouldn’t look back and see him, but he went straight on, disappearing into the snow that had started falling more quickly again. After a moment, Doyle got up and followed, not wanting to chance mistaking his way and freezing to death so close to home, not in what was turning into a proper snow storm.

Roland was in just as much of a hurry to get home, practically running back along the path, and Doyle paused when they got to the car park, letting him get safely inside the _Half Moon_ again, before he slipped to the other side of the driveway and took himself around the back, skirting the building until he got to the house he shared with Bodie, lights still off, no one home. He shook off Brooklyn’s jacket and hung it up on their own coatrack, heeled off his soaking wet trainers, and socks, and took himself upstairs to get changed and warm, bumping the central heating up as he passed the thermostat.

There was still no sign of Bodie when he came down again, so he let himself out and back to the pub, locking up carefully behind him, never mind bolted horses. 

Bodie was sitting at a table with Burt - and Roland, and the suited young man - when Doyle got back, finishing off a plate of chips and a pint of something dark. He nodded at Doyle, then tipped his head to the stranger. “This is Neil - his car went off the road up the hill, he’s stuck for the night. Did you get hold of Aunt Jackie?”

Doyle shook his head. “Gone out to her art class with a mate. Try again tomorrow.”

“Lines’ll be down tomorrow,” Burt said, unwittingly breaking into their code. “We’ll be snowed in properly if this goes on - it’s been halfway up the backdoor before now, you know.”

“Will the farmhouse be snowed in too?” Roland asked, as casual as anything, and it was all Doyle could do not to twist his arm behind his back and arrest him then and there. Trouble was, he had no proof, nothing that would hold up in court.

“Oh yeah - worse than here,” Burt said. “But they’ll be alright - Clarry’ll keep everyone fed!”

No phones, no internet, no way out, Doyle thought. Roland must be worried about what would happen to the papers next. He caught Bodie’s eye, hoped he didn’t look as desperate as he felt.

“Where’s my dinner then?” he asked. “There I am, slaving away to keep your relatives happy…”

Burt produced a plate of food for him - the promised lamb chops, cauliflower cheese and chips, and Doyle was able to joke about arteries and eat everything he was given. Eventually Neil left them alone and went to find his room, and Roland took himself, sneezing harder than ever, upstairs to bed, and Doyle finally felt some of the tension begin to leach from him.

“So?” Bodie asked, leaning close over the table. “What happened then? Where’d he go?”

Doyle glanced over to Brooklyn, who was standing behind the bar as if she expected customers, tipping his head to call her over, and when she’d sat down with them, he told them everything as quickly as he could. “You were right, Brooklyn - he had the notes. He met the blokes from the farm - Clarry’s artists,” he clarified, when Burt frowned at him, and then nodded at him too. “You were right as well, he did know them.”

“What do we do then, call the police in?” Burt asked. “They’ll never get here tonight, and I’m not sure I’d want them to turn out anyway.” He caught Bodie’s raised eyebrow. “Curly’s wife just had their first baby, not a good time for him to get lost in a blizzard.”

“If you’re right about the weather,” Doyle said, one eye on Burt, “ Then they can’t get the papers away in this. They’ll have to keep them at the farmhouse. We just need to get over there…”

“Not in this,” Burt repeated, shaking his head, and they all deflated a little.

“We need a secret passage at this end,” Bodie said glumly, words slurred slightly as he rested his cheek against one hand. “Never mind one at Firrester Farm.”

“I’ve said it before,” Doyle said, a sudden glint of humour in the dark mood that cloaked them all, “Your wish is my command. I’ve not told you what I found out about Burt’s study this afternoon, have I?”

“What did you find in Burt’s study this afternoon, then, Sherlock?” Bodie asked, his lips quirking in a smile as he caught Doyle’s eye. “It’d better be fit for young ears…” Brooklyn stuck out her tongue at him, and Bodie grinned more broadly. 

“Eight wooden panels over a mantelpiece, a floor made of stone, a room facing east - everything except a partridge in a pear tree. I think…”

“The secret passage starts here, not at the farm!” Brooklyn interrupted him, then slapped her hands over her mouth.

Doyle grinned at her and nodded. “It makes sense, when you think about it…”

“Sal’s family used to own this place and the farm.” Burt nodded. “You’re right, it does make sense. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

Brooklyn gave a sudden squeak behind her hands, and then another one, blue eyes suddenly wide. She paused, looking around them as if waiting, and when no one said anything, she took her hands down and clenched them together in excitement. “But - that means if those two artists have got your papers, we could get them away before they can leave the house!” 

Doyle felt his own eyes widening. “You’re right,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“Good girl, Brook!” Burt said at the same time.

Bodie’s face widened into another grin. “It’s always the quiet ones,” he said. “I knew we had to keep an eye on you!”

Brooklyn blushed, her eyes shining, and for a moment they all just sat there. Beside their table the fire flickered and sparked at the odd melted snowflake that slid down the chimney, and behind the bar the fridges hummed and breathed electrically at them.

“Now?” Doyle asked at last, voicing what he was sure they were all thinking, and judging from the scrape of three chairs across the floor, he’d been exactly right.

“Now,” Bodie said. “Because if it’s not there I don’t think I’d survive the build-up of excitement.”

“Of course it’s there, mucker!” Burt slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Come on.”

He led them out of the bar to this study, certain enough that no one would be venturing out tonight to demand a pint, and closed the door behind them. Bodie took the cloth out of his pocket and spread it on Burt’s desk, and they all leaned to glance between it and the walls of the room.

“There’s the eight panels alright,” Bodie said. “The cross is in the middle of the second panel in the top row. Alright, let’s see…” He strode over to the fireplace, reached up, and began to press hard in the middle of the panel. Nothing happened. 

“Press harder!” Doyle suggested. “Put some muscle behind it!”

“I don’t want to wake Roland,” Bodie retorted, running his hand from one side of the wood to the other, pausing to push here and there. 

Suddenly, the panel slid silently back under his hands, just as the one at Firrester Farm had done, and Doyle found himself staring at a dark space, strangely thrilled. It was all those adventure stories when he was a kid, he told himself, feeling his heart beat quickly. It wasn’t every day you came across something from _Boy’s Own_ , after all. 

“Well, it’s not quite big enough to get into,” Bodie said. “It’s not exactly the entrance to the secret passageway.”

Doyle turned around, remembering the night they’d found Roland snooping around in the room, and spotted Burt’s torch at the corner of his desk. He stepped forward to stand beside Bodie, and held the light to the opening - yes, there was something there. “There’s a handle,” he said, “With wire or something attached to it. Hold on…” He passed the torch to Bodie, closed his hand firmly around the handle, and pulled. It didn’t move, so he reached up with his other arm and tried again. “It’s moving…”

The handle gave way suddenly, coming away from the wall entirely, pulling the ancient rusted wire with it. At the same time there was a curious grating noise from below the hearthrug in front of the fireplace, and Brooklyn almost fell.

“There’s something under the rug!” she gasped. “It moved!”

The wire wouldn’t pull any further, so Doyle let it go, looking down at where Brooklyn stood. To the right of the fireplace, under the rug, something had indeed moved, there was no doubt of that. The rug sagged down instead of being flat and straight.

“It’s moved a stone in the floor,” Bodie said, his voice deep, so that Doyle knew he was as excited about this as he’d been about exploring the ship on Kirrin Island. “The handle works a lever, that’s attached to the wire, and at the other end - come on, get the rug up, and roll back the carpet!”

They all bent down to the edge of the carpet, even Brooklyn, prising it away from the wall and lifting it to reveal that a big flat stone from the floor had slipped downwards, leaving a black space where it had been, and a chill of cold air. Bodie shone the torch into it. The stone had slid to one side, and there was a space just big enough to take someone bending down, walled on three sides, the fourth side a stretch of eternal blackness.

“Blood and sand…” Burt said. “To think that’s been under there all this time!”

“The entrance to the secret way.” Doyle looked up and caught Bodie’s eye, knew the light in it matched his own. “That must be the passage leading off - it’ll go under the pub and out. Come on then!”

“Hang on, mucker!” Burt reached out and grabbed his arm before he could step into the hole. “What about Roland upstairs? I don’t fancy him coming downstairs and shutting us under there.”

“Lock him in,” Brooklyn said rebelliously. “There’s a key on his room, isn’t there? If he’s in bed, he’ll never know.”

“Not a bad idea.” It would keep him out of their hair, and even be an effective prison cell until they could get someone down here to pick him up. 

“It gets my vote,” Bodie agreed. “I’ll go and…”

“Let me, mucker - and then I’ll hang on here and make sure no one else disturbs you.”

“You sure?” Doyle began, but Bodie was nodding understandingly at Burt, not looking surprised at all.

“Cheers mate. Don’t suppose you’ve got an extra torch handy?”

“Two!” Brooklyn said quickly, and Doyle turned to her in surprise.

“You want to come?”

“Yeah!” She looked nervous but excited, every inch a teenager off an adventure, and Doyle couldn’t find it in him to deny her. As long as she stuck with them, she’d be alright.

“Right then,” he said, “We need torches and coats, and if we’re not back in - ” He glanced at his watch. “- an hour, call for…” Well, not anyone in this weather.

“We’ll be out,” Bodie said firmly. “How far is it up to the farm?”

“Twenty minutes,” Doyle remembered. “If you walk over the common.”

“Right.” Bodie reached into his pocket and pulled out - wonder of wonders - his mobile phone. “If we’re not out in two hours max, speed dial five and say you need to talk to Jax urgently - given ‘em our names if they don’t put you straight through.”

Burt nodded, tucked the phone away, and went out to the hall cupboard, followed by Brooklyn, where they heard him rummaging around. He came back with two heavy duty torches. “I wish I still had my Webley, mucker.”

“You’re not the only one,” Doyle muttered, but he took the torches with a nod of thanks, and when Brooklyn came back he swapped one for the waxed jacket she passed him. Bodie had his own coat, and Brooklyn herself was swathed in a tattered green padded anorak that smelled vaguely of fishing trips.

“I can’t find mine,” she said apologetically, and Doyle remembered he’d left it hanging up in their hallway. 

“Right,” he said, with a final glance around. “Let’s go!”

Bodie let him lead the way, stepping down into the hole, feeling the chill of the air biting at his ankles, and then sinking disconcertingly into it as he bent over to fit into the stone-lined tunnel. The cold slid into his nostrils, his mouth, as if he could taste it going down his throat, and he swallowed, concentrated instead on the slight ache in his knees and back as they protested, on tracing the light from his torch as it lit his way ahead. After just a few feet the passage opened upwards and outwards, and he stood up in relief. He could feel his hair still brushing the roof, but it was a relief not to have to stoop. 

“It gets bigger here,” he called back in encouragement, flashing the beam of his torch all around. “And I think we’re going in the right direction.”

Brooklyn appeared beside him, standing up and gazing around. He could hear her breath, fast and unsteady, but she was unflinching - she’d do, he thought.

“Bloody hell! I might be getting too old for this!” Bodie had followed Brooklyn through, and now he grabbed at Doyle’s leg and pulled himself up, not letting go straight away. “You hear that creaking? That’s me!”

“Look,” Doyle said, ignoring him and shining his light on the passage walls. “We’re going towards the common - and see how sandy that is? The common’s got sandy soil. Just hope it’s not fallen in anywhere.”

They set off again, Doyle in front with Brooklyn beside him, Bodie bringing up the rear since the passage wasn’t wide enough for them to walk three abreast. 

“Isn’t it cold and dark,” Brooklyn said, shivering. “Do you think we’re the first people to come here for hundreds of years?”

“Could be,” Doyle said absently. “Look out - the passage has fallen in a bit here.”

Three bright torches shone in front of them, and they could see that the sandy roof had indeed crumbled. Doyle looked up at what was left, but it seemed solid enough now, and so they strode over the fall, and then carried on. The passage was very straight, although it bent one way or the other occasionally, past rocky outcrops in the walls. The roof dipped down now and then too, so that they kept their heads lowered as they walked, to avoid knocking into it by surprise.

“It’s wider here,” Doyle said suddenly, and flashed his torch around to show the others.

“It’s been widened to make a sort of room,” Brooklyn said. “Look, there’s a kind of bench at the back made out of rock - like a resting place.”

“Do you want a rest?” Bodie asked, but Brooklyn shook her head. 

“We’ve only got an hour!” she said, almost jostling Doyle in her enthusiasm to keep going.

They went on again, walking until Doyle began to feel as if he was in some kind of computer game, the scenery ahead unchanging, only their lights to show them where they were going. And yet… he stopped.

“What’s up?” Bodie asked, behind him. “Not another roof-fall?”

“No - but I think we’ve come to the end of the passage.” Brooklyn had stopped beside him, and he could feel Bodie crowding closely at his back. The passage had certainly come to an end. There was a rocky wall in front of them, and set firmly in it were iron staples for footholds. They rose into the darkness of the wall, and when Doyle turned his torch upwards, they could see a square opening in the roof of the passage.

“I’ll go first,” he decided. He was lighter than Bodie, should one of them give way - and there was no way he was sending Brooklyn to test the rungs first.

Bodie said nothing, though Doyle could almost feel him straining at the bit. Doyle tucked his torch into his pocket, relying on the other two for light, and began to pull himself up by the staples in the wall. The iron flaked under his hands, but they stood firm in their setting. He seemed to go up forever, hand-foot-hand-foot, like climbing up a chimney, or that well back on Kirrin Island. It was cold, and smelt musty.

Suddenly he came to a ledge, and he stepped onto it. He took his torch from his pocket and flashed it around. There was a stone wall behind him. The black hole up which he had come yawned at his feet. He shone this torch in front of him, and felt a shock of surprise course through him.

There was no stone wall in front of him, but a big wooden door, made of black oak. A handle was set about waist high, and Doyle reached down to turn it. Where the hell was he?

The door opened outwards, over the ledge, and it was difficult to get around it without falling back into the hole. He managed to open it all the way, squeezing around it without losing his footing or his hold, and stepped beyond it, expecting to find himself in a room.

Instead, his hand felt more wood in front of him. He shone his torch around, and found that he was up against what looked like another door. Under his searching fingers it suddenly moved sideways, and slid silently away.

And then he knew where he was. The cupboard at Firrester farmhouse, the one with the false back. All that time, when he’d sat inside it, in the darkness, feeling unsure, this is what had been at his back!

The cupboard was full of clothes now, he could feel them brushing against him, and he stood still and listened. There was no sound - should he take a quick look, see if he could find the papers? Bodie and Brooklyn were waiting patiently for him below… No, he couldn’t leave them there.

He stepped back into the space behind the sliding back, slipping it across again so that he stood on the narrow ledge with the old oak door wide open to one side. He didn’t bother to close it properly, but felt about with his feet for the iron staples, and began to lower himself back down, rung by rung, torch tucked safely back in his pocket.

“Was beginning to think you’d found yourself a bird up there,” Bodie said when he was back down again, and Doyle felt Brooklyn dig him in the ribs with her elbow. He grinned.

“You’ll never guess where it goes,” he said. “Into that cupboard, Bodie, the one with the secret back. Right in the artist’s rooms!”

“Nicely done,” Bodie said, as if he’d arranged it that way himself. “Anyone up there?”

“I couldn’t hear anyone - they could be asleep, but it’s not that late. I think we should chance it.”

“Right then…”

Doyle led the way back up, with Brooklyn after him again, and Bodie coming up last. When he got to the top he listened again, sliding the cupboard open and waiting until he was sure he couldn’t’ hear anything, then he pushed his way carefully through the shirts and jackets in the wardrobe, pushed open one of the doors, and peered into the room.

Nothing. Whether it was Wilton or Thomas, they’d left the light on, and Doyle stepped out of the cupboard to the floor easily, followed by the other two. There was a big bed, a chest of drawers, small table and two armchairs.

Bodie nudged him, and Doyle saw a door in the far corner. “Adjoining rooms,” Bodie hissed. “We can lock the doors to the landing and search them both so no one can come in.”

“You’re full of good ideas,” Doyle said, low-voiced, with a quick grin. “I’ll take the other room then…” 

The other room was empty too, the artists no doubt downstairs in their living room, watching television or talking with Sam and Clarry. He stepped over quickly to lock the door to the room, feeling safer once he’d done so, and then turned his attention to the search. 

There weren’t many places even for papers to be hidden, sparse furniture, a mostly empty suitcase at the foot of the bed, rugs, curtains, drawers - nothing. There was a fireplace in one corner, and he knelt down to flash his torch up it - nothing.

Bodie appeared at the doorway between the two rooms. “Anything?”

“Not a sausage,” he said gloomily. “What’s the betting they’ve the papers on them?”

“No bet,” Bodie said straight away, stepping in to stand beside him. “Have you looked in the pillowcases?”

Doyle shot him a look. “No, I forgot how to do a room over in - oh, the last two weeks.” It had been longer than that since he’d had to search somewhere himself, but it had felt oddly like getting back on a bicycle, every step and inch a familiar routine.

“We’re going to have to go back without them,” he said. “ _Fuck_!”

“Psst!” 

Doyle looked up, amused despite himself, as Brooklyn gestured at them from the doorway. 

“I can hear voices!”

 

**Chapter Nineteen**

He turned his head, but Brooklyn was right, there were footsteps and voices coming up the stairs, Thomas and Wilton back to their rooms. “Bollocks…” he began, and then froze. The handle on the door was turning.

A louder voice. “What the hell? Oi, Wilton - I’ll have to come through yours, the door’s stuck.” 

“Yeah, al… Hang on. What’s going on? Mine won’t open either!”

Doyle began to push Bodie back to the first room, wincing as the doors were both rattled, and there were more footsteps outside.

“Is there a problem?” It was Clarry.

“The doors are locked!”

“They can’t be - they must just be stuck. Let me have a try.” There was more rattling. “Well this odd - hold on, let me get the spare keys.” 

“Are the papers safe?” a voice asked suddenly outside the door, and Doyle looked up, catching Bodie’s startled glance at the same time. 

“They’re in your room - you tell me!”

The door handle rattled again, even more violently, but Doyle ignored it. His papers were here, somewhere in this room. He gestured Bodie and Brooklyn towards the cupboard, began looking around hurriedly, even though he knew Bodie had already searched thoroughly. But he couldn’t have - there had to be somewhere he’d missed!

More door rattling. “There’s got to be someone in there!”

“How could someone have got into your rooms?” Sam was up there now, voice quiet and confident. “It’s an old house, maybe the cold’s caused the locks to catch somehow. Clarry’s just getting the keys.”

Doyle spun around frantically, lifting an arm to run a frustrated hand through his hair - and his elbow caught the edge of a heavy vase that stood on the chest of drawers. As if in slow motion he saw it topple, reached out to it, and succeeded only in fumbling it, so that it caught hard on the corner of the wood, and dropped with a _crash_! to the floor.

For a split second, the world stood held its breath in shock, and then all hell broke loose at the door. 

“Get this door open!”

“I’ll break the bloody thing down!”

“You’ll do no such thing…”

But Sam’s voice wasn’t about to stop the men now they knew that someone was in their room. 

“Come _on_!” Bodie urged, reaching out to grab Doyle’s arm and tug him over to the cupboard, and he went, because he didn’t have any choice. 

“Go!” he said to Bodie, and Bodie took a look at Brooklyn’s terrified face and disappeared into the darkness behind the men’s clothes. “Go on, love,” Doyle said more calmly to her. “Just follow Bodie down, you’ll be fine. I’ll be right after you.”

He watched as she nodded, pale as mist, and pushed her way through. From behind there was a crash, as the men bashed hard at the door, and sounds of a scuffle as Sam presumably tried to stop them. It was no good though - another crash, and the wood visibly buckled, though it held. Doyle slid into the cupboard, pulling the door closed behind him, and stood waiting amongst the clothes for Brooklyn to be safely through, racking his brains for anywhere they hadn’t looked. His notes had to be somewhere in that bloody room! 

He pushed aside a jacket on the clothes rail, and under his hand something rustled in the dark. His heart gave a sudden leap. Suppose the papers had been left in the pocket of whatever the men had been wearing earlier? It was the only place he hadn’t looked… Barely breathing, he reached into the inner pocket of the jacket - and drew out a sheaf of papers. Behind him the bedroom door finally gave way with a tremendous smash, and he didn’t dare stop to check they were the right papers, he pushed his way to the back of the cupboard, and out onto the ledge. He couldn’t find the lever to push the false back across into place, so he left it and started down the iron staples, pushing at the heavy oak door, hoping against hope that the men wouldn’t notice the cupboard went further back than normal. He was in too precarious a position to put his full weight behind it, but it would have to do.

There was a shout behind him, sounding so close that he almost lost his footing on the rungs. 

“They’re gone - the bloody papers are gone!”

“They can’t have - there’s no one here!”

“I’m telling you they are - and my clothes are every which-way… what the _fuck_? Get your phone down here…”

Too late for hope now - light appeared above as he scrambled down from rung to rung, and then it suddenly flashed across him.

“There!”

“You fucker - you bloody wait right there!”

The staples seemed to go on and on, but with a jarring that went all the way up his leg, Doyle finally took a step that turned out to be solid floor, where Bodie, the fool, was waiting for him. There was no room to stand and fight, they had to run, and he pushed Bodie ahead of him after Brooklyn, in a tortuous escape through the dark, cold tunnel, heads bent away from the roof, eyes on the rough floor ahead of them.

“Go - go!” Doyle urged, as Bodie slowed in front of him, but it was Brooklyn who’d stumbled, her torch skidding ahead of her into the black, the beam fading and then dying entirely as Bodie pulled her to her feet.

“There they are! See their light!” Footsteps pounded behind them, echoing up the long tunnel towards them. Bodie had got Brooklyn moving again, but the delay had been enough for the men to gain confidence, and she’d slowed, her ankle twisted when she fell. 

“Leave me _alone_!” Brooklyn suddenly shouted into the darkness behind them, “Just leave me alone!”

“It’s a girl - just a bloody girl!” one of the men shouted - “ _Kids_!” 

“Come here, you little bitch,” the other voice came in reply. “We’ll show you what happens to interfering brats…”

 _Fuck_ … Surely they were almost there, it had been barely a mile… The men had fallen behind again, hampered maybe by their own lack of light, but they were still coming. A curve in the path would blot them out for a moment, and then they’d be past it, and in a straight line of sight again. Darkness and darkness and darkness… and then Doyle’s hands were on Bodie again, because Bodie had stopped, and Brooklyn had stopped, and it was the end of the passage and she was refusing to go up ahead of them. 

“No listen to me!” she hissed. “If I go last they’ll think there’s nothing to be scared of - they’ll come up after me!”

“It’s not safe…” he began, but Bodie interrupted.

“She’s right - if we scare them off now we’ll lose them back the other way, and they could have weapons up there for all we know.”

“I don’t like it…”

“Neither do I, but…”

“There’s no _time_!” Brooklyn said urgently. “I’ll come up right after you!”

Fuck… “Go!” he said to Bodie, because the men had come around the final bend, and their lights were getting bright again, their shouts triumphant.

He ducked under the final lintel of the passage, scrambling along in an uncomfortable crouched run for the last few paces, and then he was standing again, the light from Burt’s study bright in his eyes, and Bodie was hauling him up and out.

“You little bitch!” Doyle heard from the subterranean depths, and then Brooklyn’s fair hair appeared, and he could reach for her and pull her to safety. He gestured urgently at Bodie, dived across the room to turn out the overhead light, and then back to where a pale bobbing light had appeared from the passageway. There was a grunt as the first man climbed out, holding a mobile phone flashlight ahead of him, and Bodie dispatched him by simply stepping up behind him and covering his mouth with a strong hand. The second man appeared, rising from the darkness like a swimmer from water, and Doyle reached down, swung an elbow around his neck, and tugged him off balance.

“Lights please, Burt!” Bodie said, sounding cheerful, and the overheads blinked brightly on.

The man Wilton struggled against Doyle’s arm, and he took some pleasure in the fact that he could still overcome a man at least twenty - alright thirty - years younger than himself with his bare hands, tightening his stranglehold a little just to be on the safe side.

“Got any rope, Burt?” Doyle asked, glancing over to Bodie. Thomas had given up struggling, but he’d feel better if neither of them were free to do any kind of damage.

“Oh, I think I can do better than that,” Burt said. “I had a rummage around whilst you were away. Collected all sorts over the years, you know. Knives, knuckledusters - handcuffs.”

“Knew you weren’t just a pretty face,” Bodie said. “That’ll do nicely. Care to do the honours?”

Burt cuffed first Thomas, and then Wilton, and Doyle swung his shoulders, feeling an ache in his muscles already. It was one thing to be able to do it, he supposed, another to be able to do it unscathed. He stared absently at their two prisoners, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the papers he’d taken from the cupboard. Be a bit embarrassing if it turned out not to be… no, that was his handwriting, alright. He looked up, nodded to Bodie.

“So who sent you?” Bodie asked. “And what exactly was it you were after?”

Neither man spoke, staring into the distance like pros. 

“I’m guessing they’re not Russian,” Doyle said casually. “And not our lot, or at least not any more. Maybe just from someone who pays well.”

“They do say that money’s the root of all evil,” Bodie agreed, moving over to stand beside and slightly behind him. “And these two don’t look smart enough to have much of a clue. Good job we’ve got our songbird upstairs.”

Their eyes flashed at that. 

“Yeah, Roland’s been very helpful - and he’s promised to be a lot more helpful, so it won’t be long before we know whether these two deserve a nice long stretch somewhere… remote.”

“What, like a gulag?”

“Bodie! There’s no gulags anymore!”

“No?”

“No. They call ‘em _facilities_ now. And they’re not just in Russia. Got ‘em all over the world now. Put these two on a plane, and...”

One of them - Doyle thought it was Thomas - whimpered.

“What do you want to do with them for now?” Burt asked. “In the current absence of planes?”

“Could put ‘em back down there.” Doyle nodded towards the passage. “Get Sam to block it up the other end, bring his farm dogs up for a bit of extra security. They’ll keep safe enough.”

“Bit dark, though,” Bodie suggested.

“Oh they won’t mind that, big boys like them…”

“There’s the little pantry,” Brooklyn said suddenly. “It hasn’t got any windows, but there’s a lock for the door outside.”

In the end they locked them into one of the guest bedrooms upstairs, cuffed to each other and then to the wrought iron railings of the bed, throwing a duvet over them and deciding out loud, reluctantly, that they didn’t want them to freeze to death before they could be dealt with properly. Roland they left where he was, safely locked in, snoring away behind his door.

“Nice bag we’ve got here,” Bodie said with a grin. “How soon do you reckon we can get Jax down?”

“Cowley would have sent us in on skis,” Doyle said through a yawn. “At the crack of before-dawn.”

“You didn’t mean that all stuff about sending them somewhere to be tortured, did you?” Brooklyn asked. She’d watched the proceedings with a solemn eye, ever since the men had been dragged up from the tunnel, and Doyle realised she was shivering now, her face still pale.

“Of course not,” he said easily. “It helps to keep them on their toes, that’s all. You did a grand job tonight yourself - good job our boss wasn’t around to see you, he’d’ve had you recruited before you say _ugg boots_.”

“Yeah - thanks.” Bodie added. “That was a good call down there - you were right, we probably would have frightened them off.”

Brooklyn shrugged, and Burt strolled over, put an arm around her shoulders. “I did some calling of my own while you were off in the bowels of the earth - got hold of Marshall. He’s never heard of John Roland - or any kind of Roland. He’s still got you scheduled for March tutorials.”

Doyle caught Bodie’s eye. “Then who the hell is he? How did he pull that one off?”

“We never called him, did we?” Bodie said thoughtfully. “He called us to arrange it all, gave me his personal number, but we never used it…”

“How did he know what we were working on in time to set all this up?”

“Another question for Jax,” Bodie decided, through a yawn. “We’ll send carrier pigeons in the morning!”

“You want to stay with them tonight, or hang on over here with me?” Burt asked, giving Brooklyn a squeeze. “I could use the company, and the room next to my suite’s still free…”

“Okay.” She nodded. “I’m not sleepy though…”

“I am,” Bodie said, reaching out to grasp Doyle’s arm, and pull him towards the door. “Bed time!”

It felt strange, leaving three villains locked up in the pub, but as Bodie said there was no way they could get out, and nowhere for them to go in this weather if they did. 

Doyle wasn’t entirely sure they’d make it the dozen paces to their own place when he opened the door to find the snow still falling, a strange whirling white world. They stumbled homeward somehow, Bodie refusing to let go of him until they were safely indoors, and then refusing again until they were safely upstairs, and then explaining that the best way to get warm when it was snowing, was to make sure they were both naked and press closely together, body to body.

“I don’t think it’s the same if there’s a building between us and the snow,” Doyle said breathlessly, as Bodie started pressing some of his nakedness more firmly than other parts. “Or a fourteen tog feather duvet. You sure you passed your Arctic survival training…?”

Bodie didn’t answer, but he kissed him, and they moved together under the warmth of the covers, under the snowy skies above their new home.

o0o

They watched Roland and the two artists being taken away in handcuffs, the police with careful instructions to await their further collection by CI5. Roland had confessed to nothing, not even to knowing Thomas and Wilton, although Thomas and Wilton had explained very nicely that morning exactly how they’d met him, looking for some muscle for hire in London. Jax would sweat them, find out everything that could be found out, Doyle had no fears about that, and they’d discover how it was that the Minister’s trace on Red had led Roland’s masters to CI5 instead of the other way around. Bloody politicians. He turned around to find Bodie standing behind him with a smirk on his face.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” he said to Doyle’s querying look. “No more Roland - no more lessons!”

Doyle let him enjoy his moment, smiling slowly in response, and then he reached out and poked him in the stomach to get his proper attention. “Until March,” he said. “Then we’re back on with the genuine brewery, aren’t we.”

Bodie’s face fell for a split second, then he lit up again, and threw his arms around Doyle in a sudden hug. “Yeah, but that’s not until March, and Roland even did some good there - we’ll be ahead of the game this time, won’t we! I reckon we could go part part-time, you know…” He tugged Doyle back towards the doorway, an arm around his shoulders as they went inside. 

“It’s not bad down here, is it - full of rogues and villains and secret passageways - keep the boredom at bay. Bet we find some more, you know, lurking in the respectable Dorset countryside…”

“Oh yeah,” Doyle said, enjoying the weight of Bodie’s arm, the warmth of the pub as they crossed the floor to the bar, the murmur of talk above the sound of the jukebox, and the smell of Joanna’s evening meal wafting from the kitchen. “More adventures - just what I wanted when I retired!”

And yet, somehow it was, as long as Bodie was there by his side - and there wasn’t a doubt about that. 

Sod the new year.

Doyle let Bodie lead him just as far as the end of the bar, and then he came to a halt, waited for Bodie to face him, an eyebrow raised in quizzical amusement, and lifted a finger to point upwards.

And under the mistletoe, Doyle leaned in and kissed him, kissed Bodie, on the lips, not caring who else was there in the room, and the world continued to turn, and he was sure that there were many more adventures to come.

 

_December 2014_


End file.
